Darwinism is an exercise in creative bookkeeping for hiding that its explanatory
debts far exceed its explanatory resources. Think of the No Free Lunch principle,
therefore, as an auditors tool for scrutinizing Darwinisms inflated claims
and showing its debts to be in default. Fortunately, as recent corporate debacles
have taught us, creative bookkeeping can at best postpone but not avoid an official
declaration of bankruptcy.
 William Dembski, The Design Revolution (IVP, 2004), p. 258.

In the past year, hits on Creation-Evolution Headlines doubled, as they did the two prior years also.
Thanks to readers for spreading the word!

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Do Guppies Make Good Darwinian Grandmothers? 12/31/2005
If a report on EurekAlert
is right, some evolutionary biologists used lack of evidence for natural selection as confirmation for
evolution. They predicted guppies would show no evidence of a grandmother effect
on life history after reproduction, and that is what they found.
The question under study is why evolution keeps aging individuals living
if its only reproductive fitness that matters in keeping a species going.
Perhaps the aging are worth keeping around if they contribute to the fitness
of the offspring (see 07/23/2003 entry).
After admitting that the granny effect is not found in many mammals, even among
sociable groups, the article said:

Since guppies are livebearers that provide no postnatal maternal care, Reznick et al.predicted
the populations would show no differences in postreproductive lifespan--which is what they found.
Though overall lifespan varied among the populations, these variations stemmed from differences in time
allotted only to reproduction. Postreproductive lifespan, in contrast, showed no signs of being
under selection, and appeared to be what the authors called a random add-on at the end of the
life history. Random or not, this is the first demonstration of a postreproductive lifespan in fish. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

The article then stated that whether postreproductive lifespan can be under selection at all
is an open question. But then, it said that this new study helps gain an evolutionary
perspective on such matters  including how they relate to humans.

What kind of reasoning says, we predict there will
be no evolutionary natural selection on a process, then uses the confirmation of the prediction as
evidence for evolution? You cant have it both ways. The article stated
an evolutionary principle: For natural selection to shape the twilight years,
postreproductive females should contribute to the fitness of their offspring or relatives.
Notice that word should. If natural selection
is the be-all and end-all of existence, and if nothing makes sense except in the light of
evolution, and if most biologists expected there to be a granny effect, then Reznicks
study amounts to falsification. Grandparents everywhere should be relieved that
another evolutionary principle has been falsified, because now their self-worth does not need
to be tied to their tubes.
You cant bet at the racetrack that an aging
Charlie Horse will win because it is more fit, then claim his loss also confirms your
prediction. Charlie Horse is not just a loser; hes a pain in the arm of science.
Charlies hoarse cries for his theory to get to the finish line, or even past the starting
gate, are increasingly falling on deaf ears among those who know how to spot winners and losers (see
09/26/2005, 08/15/2005
commentaries).
Next headline on:Marine Biology 
Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory 
Dumb Ideas

Peruse Pyrrhus: Pyrrhic victory is a phrase used by
John
West, Pat Buchanan on
Real Clear Politics
and others to characterize the completely one-sided decision by Judge John E. Jones.
(For those needing a history refresher, King
Pyrrhus of Epirus won a battle against the Romans
in 279 BC, but sustained such heavy losses it nearly ruined his kingdom, and eventually contributed to its downfall.)

Hail Storm: Victors hail US evolution decision, wrote the
BBC News with a big portrait
of Charles Darwin. The article quoted the decision and echoed primarily the attitudes of the
winners.

Praise Be:News@Nature
similarly accentuated the positive attitude of the winners: a complete victory, said a lawyer
representing the Dover parents who brought the ACLU lawsuit. Kevin Padian, pro-Darwinist scientist
who testified, called ID effectively dead, crowing, The whole place here is saying that this is beyond our wildest dreams.

Straight Story: Jeffrey Mervis at Science
Now was a little more reserved at the celebration, at least giving one quote to John West who called
this government-imposed censorship that wont work. He gave Judge Jones
last word, though, with his attempt to head off at the pass claims he was an activist judge.

Basking Sharks: The two lawyers who won the Dover case are enjoying some fame,
reports Law.com. Their comments
seem like verbatim duplicates of those by Judge Jones. Tom Magnuson on
Access
Research Network, however, noted an irony in their views. Their stated principle, right to believe includes
the right not to believe, seems to fly in the face of the Dover decision: The Darwinistic
worldview will now be taught unchallenged. While in school in Pennsylvania, you WILL be taught
the state-sponsored worldview, he commented.

Slam-Dunk? No. Mortal Wound? No. Alan Boyle at
MSNBC said the debate will move on to new
grounds. As much as it pleased Darwins defenders, it rankled intelligent
design proponents at least as much.

Networkers: The ID
Network went on offense, not defense. They accused the ruling: The decision in Dover today took
evolution out of science and made it a religion.

Catholic Rebuttal: Cardinal Schonborn answered his critics with a forthright
response in First
Things about the limits of science. Tom Magnuson on
Access
Research Network called this a MUST read to understand the current culture war between scientism (neo-Darwinism) and design theory.

Politically Incorrect: Tom Bethell, author of A Politically Incorrect Guide
to Science, wrote in The
Washington Times that this is not even remotely a setback for ID Making
it Banned in Boston is only going to ignite the flames.

Public Justice: The Center
for Public Justice denounced the ruling, calling it largely philosophical and theological
in character and that Judge Jones was outside his domain, acting like a court authority
in the high Middle Ages. School choice was their recommendation.

Neo-Orthodoxy: Paul Campos in the
Rocky
Mountain News referred to the Spanish Inquisition in a satirical editorial about the
irony of free-speech liberals embracing an intolerant orthodoxy.

Judge in the Dock: John West wrote a series of articles for EvolutionNews asking pointed
questions about Judge Jones and his decision: #1
Is Judge Jones an activist judge?
#2 Did Judge Jones
read the evidence submitted to him in the Dover trial?
#3 Did Judge Jones
accurately report and describe the ID resources?
#4 Is Judge
Jones a conservative Republican?

No Waterloo: ID leader William Dembski wrote in
Science and Theology News that the Dover decision is
no Waterloo, but merely one battle in a long culture war.

Skittish: A school in Fargo, ND wont allow intelligent design as a debating
topic. Its too awkward and controversial, reported the
Bismarck
Tribune and InForum.
Tom Magnuson quipped on Access
Research Network that apparently schools dont want to infringe on anyones Constitutional right to
be comfortable.

Museum Shrapnel:MSNBC talked
about ongoing efforts at museums, zoos and aquariums to help docents deal with evolution critics.

Sunday School for Scientists: The AAAS is planning a special session at its annual
meeting at St. Louis in February to deal with the teaching of evolution in American high schools.
Evolution on the Front Line will feature a series of presentations Sun. Feb. 19, including
one by Vatican astronomer Rev. George Coyne. The Sunday evolution forum is considered especially
important in light of events in neighboring Kansas and other heartland areas, the announcement
states. Talking points: integrity of science, the best in science education for a
knowledge-based, globally competitive economic future.

Horn on the Cobb: Skipping over from Dover to Cobb County, an article by
Joseph Knippenberg appeared in The
American Enterprise talking about the textbook sticker case in Georgia as a textbook case on
religion in the public square. Regarding the efforts to remove the stickers that merely called
for critical thinking, he ended, One begins to wonder whether liberal toleration is a sham,
offered only to the most docile, and whether liberalism isnt itself the very sort of orthodoxy it claims to eschew.

Bluffing words, commotion, posturing, strategizing, politicking,
grandstanding... science, please? None of this matters, really; Darwinism has
already been falsified (see next story). Since evolution has failed in a
most spectacular way, we ought to be concerned not with war but with clean-up.
Next headline on:Darwinism 
Intelligent Design 
Education 
Politics and Ethics

Thermodynamics Defeats Evolution in a Most Spectacular Way 12/30/2005
The second law of thermodynamics (2TD), what Sir Arthur Eddington called the supreme law of
nature, does not permit evolution, argued Granville Sewall in
The American Spectator;
in fact, evolution violates it in a most spectacular way.
A mathematics professor at Texas A&M University, Sewall explained that 2TD applies to much
more than heat flow; it applies to every real system. He defended the second law against
the standard reply, the open system argument. Not anything
can happen in an open system, he explained, not even with a Darwinian mechanism; otherwise,
we would expect computers, spaceships, television sets and DNA to appear just with the
energy of the sun.
Sewalls lay-level article was prompted by the wars over intelligent
design. He adapted it from the appendix of a book he co-authored on The Numerical
Solution of Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations (see end of article for
reference and link). The appendix, A second look at the second law, asked,
Can ANYTHING happen in an open system? and is available online at
Math.tamu.edu.

The venue may have been a conservative rag, but the author knows
what he is talking about. Dr. Sewall is a mathematician and author with expertise in probability
and the second law of thermodynamics. He is right; tell a Darwinist about 2TD, and you
will get little more than an open system brush-off. This article pulls that
rug out. No more simplistic open-system answers,
Darwin Party: fess up, you cannot get brains from matter in motion, open system or not. Do the
math. Face the real world. Just-so storytelling cannot help in the world
of hard physical science. Its the ultimate Reality Check. No federal
judge can help you now. What would you have him do: declare the second law of
thermodynamics unconstitutional? Rule it inadmissable because of separation of
church and state? Go ahead and try. Your opponents will just appeal it to
the court of last resort: the real world.
Next headline on:Darwinism 
Physics

Evolutionary Arms Race  Is Coevolution Relentless? 12/29/2005
Camellias and the weevils that attack their seeds seem locked in conflict. The thicker
a camellia grows its protective woody covering around its seeds, the longer the feeding
tube on some weevil to break through and devour. John R. Thompson talked about such
coevolutionary arms races in Current Biology1 and asked
whether such wars can go on forever, leading to increased exaggeration of traits.
The answer is, apparently, there are limits. Traits vary in a mosaic
pattern across populations. Not all camellias are infested by beetles with the
longest boring tools. As with any war, there are hotspots and coldspots.
The dynamics of arms races seem to buffer both species against extremes.

Collectively, these studies suggest that coevolution is a pervasive process
that continually reshapes interspecific interactions across broad geographic areas.
And that has important implications for our understanding of the role of coevolution in
fields ranging from epidemiology to conservation biology. Many diseases, for example
malaria, vary geographically both in parasite virulence and host resistance, potentially
creating regions of coevolutionary hotspots and coldspots. The spread of
introduced species seems be creating new geographic mosaics of coevolution as some
species become invasive and coevolve with native species in different
ways in different regions or drive rapid evolution in native species, sometimes
in less than a hundred years or so. The results for Japanese camellia and camellia
weevils reinforce the developing view that interactions coevolve as a geographic
mosaic across landscapes, and it is often difficult for one partner to get ahead of
the other (or others) everywhere. (Emphasis added.)

This appears to provide more slippage on the evolutionary treadmill
(see 03/17/2003 entry). Though the word evolution
is involved, dont be confused; this has nothing to do with macroevolution, like
bacteria evolving into people. Coevolution leads to exaggerated traits between two
interacting species, like the beaks of hummingbirds and the flowers they pollinate.
As with all other observed forms of microevolution, including Darwins famous
finches, it involves the modification of existing traits  not the origin of new ones.
Notice how quickly changes can result; Thompson referred to rapid evolution in
native species in less than 100 years after an intruder was introduced. Young-earth
creationists could use such concepts to explain the rapid diversification of varieties
and species within created kinds, and there would be nothing Thompson or the Darwinists
could do to prove them wrong. Studies like this do not establish that coevolution can be extrapolated
endlessly into macroevolution. In fact, the quote above seems to indicate otherwise:
there are limits to the amount of change in the coevolutionary arms race.
World War II did not produce Superman.
Next headline on:Plants 
Terrestrial Zoology 
Evolutionary Theory

Echoes of Historic Supernovae Observed 12/29/2005
Astronomers using telescopes at the Cerro-Tololo observatory in Chile were able to detect the faint light echoes of supernovae
(see EurekAlert,
Space.com and original paper in
Nature1). They found three light echoes for six of the smallest
previously-catalogued supernova remnants (SNR) in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small irregular galaxy visible
from the southern hemisphere. Assuming the shock wave moves out less than 10,000 km/sec,
and calibrating against the echoes from the known 18-year old remnant of SN1987A,
they estimated the ages of two of them at 410 and 610 years. They believe surveys could
uncover many more, now that they know what to look for. The light echoes provide a method
for fixing the ages of supernova remnants.
1Armin Rest et al., Light echoes from ancient supernovae in the Large Magellanic Cloud,
Nature
438, 1132-1134 (22 December 2005) | doi:10.1038/nature04365.

Its interesting that there are no supernova remnants
claimed to be tens or hundreds of thousands of years old or older. One of the most distended
SNR's in our galaxy, the Veil Nebula, is believed to be only 5,000 years old (see 02/16/2001).
Even so, all things being equal, the light from such an event would be expected to take
some 160,000 years to arrive at earth. Why are there no older remnants reported?
Is the same true for novae? Here is a good research project for someone who likes
to catalog things and think about their implications.
Next headline on:Stellar Astronomy 
Dating Methods 
Physics

Astronomers See Poison Around Star, Think Life 12/29/2005
The Spitzer Space Telescope discovered acetylene and hydrogen cyanide, two deadly
gases, around a star. Some astronomers got all excited and thought of the birth
of life. The title of a press release from
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
read, Partial ingredients for DNA and protein found around star. The two
carbon-containing substances were found in the dust disk of star IRS 46 in Ophiucus by the
Spitzer infrared instrument. This was the only one of 100 similar stars that
contained the signature of these molecules in its surrounding disk. The press release
explained the significance:

Here on Earth, the molecules are believed to have arrived billions of years ago,
possibly via comets or comet dust that rained down from the sky.
Acetylene and hydrogen cyanide link up together in the presence of water to
form some of the chemical units of lifes most essential compounds, DNA and protein.
These chemical units are several of the 20 amino acids that make up protein and one of the four
chemical bases that make up DNA.
If you add hydrogen cyanide, acetylene and water together in a test tube and
give them an appropriate surface on which to be concentrated and react, youll get
a slew of organic compounds including amino acids and a DNA purine base called adenine,
said Dr. Geoffrey Blake of Caltech, a co-author of the paper. And now, we can detect
these same molecules in the planet zone of a star hundreds of light-years away.
(Emphasis added in all quotes.)

The implication is that this star might be in the beginning stages of a chemical evolution process,
assumed to be similar to what they believe led to life on earth. Another team member explained, This infant system might
look a lot like ours did billions of years ago, before life arose on Earth.

Evolutionists and astrobiologists like to call anyone who
questions their views people of faith. You have just seen one of their
stories use the words believed, thought to be, possibly and might. OK students,
what are the observations? 100 stars with dust disks, and only one with two poisonous substances
in their spectra. Another observation is that these substances, if mixed on earth in a test tube
by intelligent chemists, who have provided
an appropriate surface in the presence of water, at the right temperature and concentration,
will form some amino acids and one purine that is part of one DNA base. Does the word
life jump out of these observations? If not, where is your faith?
Consider the need for water. That constrains the boundary conditions to a small
fraction of possible temperatures and pressures. Consider the need for a surface. That
constrains the boundary conditions to the crust of a terrestrial planet. So lets be really
generous and give these evolutionists a watery terrestrial planet. Lets say that a
few molecules of acetylene and hydrogen cyanide (the simplest nitrile, just HCN) form naturally
or survive crash landing from a comet. So what?
To begin to even think of imagining of starting to commence to conceive of hoping that
something remotely resembling life is in the works, a lot more than two poisons with simple molecular
structures is going to be required.
Like ribose. Like phosphate. Like a way to link the adenine, phosphate and ribose together
to get a nucleotide. Like a way to get different nucleotides to link together into polynucleotides.
Like a way to isolate amino acids into a mixture all of one hand.
Like a way to get the one-handed amino acids to link up into a polypeptide. Like a way for the polynucleotides
and polypeptides to interact in functional ways. Like a membrane. Like metabolism. Like an information storage and
retrieval system. Like a stable solvent. Like protection from radiation damage.
These are just the beginnings of gigantic high hurdles that teensy weensy simple molecules need to learn how,
without guidance, to overcome.
It is a shame for scientists to hide this logic and scientific information from uninformed
readers of press releases, many of whom dont even know how to spell DNA. It is a disgrace to
wildly and recklessly extrapolate ones speculation far beyond what the data permit. It is a
crime to propagandize the public by taking rather dull, mediocre data and making it sexier by
throwing in the L word life. Dont be suckered by the people of frothy faith.
Get real. Get Creation-Evolution Headlines.Next headline on:Stellar Astronomy 
Origin of Life 
Dumb Ideas

Bombardier of the Sea 12/28/2005
Creationists have made much of the bombardier beetle
(#1,
#2)
whose firing chambers would explode
if the timing and mixture of ingredients did not work perfectly together. Now, here
is a similar case in the lowly sea slug.
EurekAlert
described research by Georgia State University scientists, who found that the sea slug Aplysia
mixes three inert ingredients to produce a sticky secretion, dyed purple, for defense:

Aplysia packages these innocuous precursors separately and then releases them
simultaneously into its mantle cavity at the precise time when they are needed,
explained [Charles] Derby. This mechanism insures the secretions potency
against attacking predators to enable sea slugs to escape.
(Emphasis added in all quotes.)

The secretion seems to contain a healing compound. The antimicrobial property
probably evolved to work against predators, said Derby. But it might also
function as an antimicrobial salve for Aplysias own wounds.

The evolutionary mythoid contributes nothing of substance
to this story. On grounds of intellectual honesty and scientific integrity,
we need to call Darwinists on the carpet for simply claiming evolution blindly made
irreducibly complex systems without telling us how. This is more of the BAD strategy
(bluffing assertions of dogmatism) that lets Darwinians escape while secreting a sticky dyed goo that
obscures understanding.
Next headline on:Marine Biology 
Amazing Stories

Historic Scopes Trial Photos Uncovered 12/28/2005
Dozens of photos of the 1925 Scopes Trial, never before published, were uncovered in
Smithsonian archives by independent historian Marcel C. LaFollette, reported
Science News.1
One photo shows the famous scene of Clarence Darrow interrogating William Jennings
Bryan on the witness stand; another shows a close up of John Scopes. LaFollette
is writing a new book on the Scopes Trial based on the photographs. They were
taken by Watson Davis, managing editor at the time of Science Service, the publisher
of what is now Science News.
The article by Ivars Peterson states that Science Service was a help
to Darrow and was helped by the trial  in fact, the trial launched it to prominence:

The Scopes trial was important to Science Service financially. Newspapers paid for articles
from the trial, and these funds helped support the struggling organization.
Science Service also played a role behind the scenes, aiding Darrows defense team.
The Science Service staff helped coordinate the gathering of scientific experts on evolution to testify at
the trial. It also distributed a series of articles, written by prominent scientists, explaining and defending
evolution.

Its important to know about the Scopes Trial because
so much political hay was made out of it. The hay machine grinds on to this day.
Maybe Science Service provided the eminent rhetorician Dudley Field Malone (see
loaded words in the Baloney Detector), or the
scholarly scientist Maynard Metcalf (see equivocation),
or the logician Horatio Hockett Newman (see either-or fallacy).
Maybe Watson Davis helped provide boilerplate for The New Republic (see
fear-mongering). The reporting about evolution
in Science News hasnt changed much. In this same issue, Bruce Bower,
in an attempt at being funny, wrote a scathing satire against intelligent design, so
biased and full of his own hot air it is not even remotely credible or amusing.
The reality of the Scopes Trial was far different than most of the reporting on it.
This has come to light recently in several books by historians like
Edward
J. Larson and Marvin
Olasky.
Worst of all was the parody Inherit the Wind, so factually inaccurate as to be
evil (see The Monkey Trial). Yet Inherit the Wind
established the modern stereotype about what happened that hot summer in Dayton, Tennessee.
These photographs are valuable for helping visualize the setting, but the words spoken
about the issue at hand are what matters. One lesson of the trial is that a win
in court can be a loss in the public arena. Maybe that will work against the
Darwinists this time in the case of Judge Joness Dover decision (see comments
by William Dembski in
Science & Theology News).
Next headline on:Darwinism

Abortion Pill Can Kill 12/28/2005
An ugly secret has come out of the abortion drug mifepristone known as RU486.
It can kill normal, healthy women, and its approval by the FDA involved procedural
violations that overlooked known safety concerns at the time. Source:
Annals of Pharmacotherapy news
release (see also EurekAlert).
The research paper by Margaret M. Gary, MD and Donna J. Harrison, MD1 examined 607
cases from the FDAs Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS):

The authors suggest these may be just the tip of the iceberg due to reluctance of institutions
to report adverse effects. They concluded, AERs relied upon by the FDA to monitor
mifepristones postmarketing safety are grossly deficient due to extremely poor quality.
1Margaret M Gary and Donna J Harrison, Analysis of Severe Adverse Events Related to
the Use of Mifepristone as an Abortifacient,
The Annals of Pharmacotherapy,
Published Online, 27 December 2005, www.theannals.com, DOI 10.1345/aph.1G481.

The power of advocacy to trump ethics and safety has been seen in this case and in
the recent stem cell flap. How many anxious women have been reassured by abortion providers
that RU486 is a safe and private way to end an unwanted pregnancy? Why have not these
reports caused the FDA to pull this dangerous drug from the market? When desire runs
science, watch out. That would never happen with a materialist wanting to
remove God from science now, would it?
Next headline on:Health 
Politics and Ethics

Health from Unlikely Sources: Poison and Scum 12/27/2005
Everything in moderation, health professionals remind us during the holidays.
Some things, however, none of us would have wanted at all  till scientists found there
was treasure in them.
Botulinum toxin (botox), for instance, is one of the deadliest
of biological poisons, but by now everyone knows it is being put to good use in cosmetic surgery.
A news release on
EurekAlert
announced that botox is useful for more than just ironing wrinkles. In addition to
treating excessive sweating or reducing skin wrinkles, it is also a highly effective
natural substance that normalizes muscle activity and can be used to reduce pain and itch.
Doctors keep finding new uses for botox at both ends of the digestive tract.
Another article on EurekAlert
announced a promising substance in pond scum that might lead to a treatment for Alzheimers
disease. A substance in Nostoc, a cyanobacterium, shows potent activity as a
cholinesterase inhibitor. If so, it might help slow the degradation of mental
and memory functions in those suffering from the degenerative disease.

Science should not only help us understand the natural
world, but find ways to improve the human condition. Sir Francis
Bacon echoed Jesus teaching that a tree is known by its fruit. A good
science will produce good fruit: in the case of science, increased health and prosperity
for humans in ways that improve the environment (compare with the fruit of Darwinism:
see 11/30/2005). We should look at the world like a treasure
hunt, the way George Washington Carver did. Things that seem dangerous,
ugly or boring sometimes prove to contain hidden treasures.
These two stories owe nothing to Darwin.
Evolutionists would have us believe that everything is out for itself,
trying to propagate its own genes at the expense of its neighbors. Darwinism sees
a world of fierce competition, with cooperation only useful occasionally, but with
selfishness as the highest good. Creationism sees a biosphere made for man and the
other organisms. Design-based science could scour the world for cures while adding
to the store of human natural knowledge. Design science sans Darwinism has the
intellectual foundation to usher in a new scientific revolution.
Next headline on:Health

How Blind Cave Fish Lose Color 12/26/2005
A study on cave fish revealed that several populations can have mutations to the same
gene. A gene that produces melanin, named Oca2, was found to be mutated in two
separate populations of cave fish, resulting in albinism. This same gene can produce
albinism in humans.

The replicated experiment is a powerful tool for experimental science, but typically
unavailable in the study of evolution. Cave adaptations have evolved in many
species independently, however, and each cave species can be considered a replicate of the same
evolutionary experiment that asks how species change in perpetual darkness. A frequent outcome is that the species lose pigmentation or become albino. Cavefish, therefore, are a rich source for the examination of the evolutionary process.
(Emphasis added.)

It was surprising to the multidisciplinary team why this gene, and not others that can also
produce albinism, was implicated. One possibility, suggested by the researchers,
is that it is a large gene presenting a big target for mutations, and it seems to have no
other functions besides helping to make melanin, the press release on
EurekAlert
states. Therefore, it doesnt diminish other aspects of fitness when it is mutated.

Here is a situation where evolutionary theory is
compatible with intelligent design or creationism. Its not a case
of evolution in the sense of new functional information being added; its a case of
function being lost. How this loss of information affects an organism is interesting, and
it is worthwhile question to ask why two cave fish populations would get the same mutation to
the same gene. If one assumes that the fish began with fully-operational Oca2
genes (as in creation/design), then it follows that a reproducing population of fish with mutations in that
gene will lead to a population of albinos, if the benefit of having color no longer matters
in the cave environment. This is downward evolution, not upward
evolution. The story differs from the just-so storytelling of Darwinian theory,
because we have plenty of empirical evidence that mutations lead to loss of function,
but no evidence that mutations can produce new function. Darwinists try to call
this evolution (in the sense of change over time),
but it doesnt do anything to help Charlies story that fish evolved from
pre-fish, or ultimately, from one-celled organisms.
Creationists could just as well study loss mutations to investigate the extent of
genetic load (deterioration) over time since the original perfect creation;
convergent devolution, therefore, is non-controversial, but convergent evolution
is what lacks empirical support.
Next headline on:Marine Biology 
Genetics 
Evolutionary Theory

How Apemen Learned to Give Christmas Presents 12/25/2005
For your Christmas amusement, some scientists think they have solved the evolution of gift giving. In an announcement on
EurekAlert called Why we give: New study finds evidence of generosity among our early human ancestors,
the introduction states,
A groundbreaking new study examines the origins of holiday giving and finds that our early
human ancestors were frequently altruistic. How could Michael Gurvin (UC Santa Barbara)
figure this out,
without human ancestors to observe or ask? For his paper in the upcoming Feb. 2006
edition of Current Anthropology, he studied food exchanges in
two small-scale, non-market societies  a classic context for understanding the evolution of
conditional cooperation in humans. He found that altruism is costly without some kind
of payback, but he also found that close kin and neighbors unable to produce much food sometimes
receive more than they give.
On the media front, the
Science
Channel has been airing a series called The Rise of Man during Christmas week.
Producers seem to be getting more bold with skin. One episode showed tribes of completely nude Homo erectus
humans in various stages of increasing enlightenment (these are played by actors, you know, with some
creative facial makeup, but otherwise anatomically correct human bodies). Another showed a newly-evolved
Homo sapiens tribe watching the effects of lightning in fear and awe.
A delirious female falls to the ground in some kind of trance, jerking and babbling uncontrollably
as the others look on with stupefied expressions. The narrator explains: and thus begins a new
chapter in the rise of human consciousness: religion.

Cavorting in the wilderness with incomprehensible grunts  how did
it come to this. (Were not talking about the actors in The Rise of Man; were
describing figuratively the evolutionary anthropologists.)
Its superfluous to have to describe how dumb Gurvins theory is, but for
those imprisoned in the mental concentration camps known as public schools, here are some
suggested cerebral exercises to awaken ones atrophied sensibilities. What are the empirical observations?
Gurvin observed modern humans acting like human beings: understanding trade, and knowing how to
give and care for the helpless. Do the observations connect at all with a story of the evolution of
generosity? No. (Chimpanzees dont act this way; see 10/28/2005
story). Did he establish any transitions from primate precursors to modern man?
No. Did he explain the origin of true, unselfish giving? No. Did he tie
altruism to a lucky random mutation? No. Does he have any way of proving
that these non-market societies did not degenerate from advanced associations of highly-capable, intelligent
human beings who were created with all their moral attributes? No. Does his theory
destroy Christmas? Yes.
Gurvin approaches science like all Darwinists do: since evolution is already a fact in their
own imaginations, research is just a metaphysical program for stuffing all data into their predetermined belief system.
If he had to prove his speculation against criticism, like a true scientist, he would come up
as naked as the actors in The Rise of Man. The Science Channel doesnt debate the
origin of humans; it just states as a matter of fact that this is the way it happened.
Any disagreement is only between Darwinists about the details. Thats why we need to get the Darwin Party out
of its cushy comfort zone of presumed authority and demand accountability. (By the way,
did you notice how the title The Rise of Man assumes the myth of progress? Michael
Ruse and Stephen Jay Gould would be appalled.)
Darwinians have had free reign for too long, and this is the result: naked grunting
actors, and scientists grunting with intellectually naked theories. They need
to be confronted with alternative scientific theories not woven out of materialistic
cloth (the kind found in The Emperors New Clothes).
They need to be confronted with the soundest criticisms of
philosophers and theologians who have not been contaminated with Darwinian LSD, that universal acid
that dissolves sound reasoning into hallucinations. Evolutionary storytelling in the
journals and on TV only survives by being insulated from debate. The Darwin Party faithful
cannot tolerate confrontation, because they fear the survival of the fittest ideas.
The Science Channel doesnt want confrontation, because it might jeopardize
their agenda of pushing the envelope of prime-time prurience. The actors dont want
confrontation or they might have to put their clothes back on and get a real job.
Isnt it fun to slap on mud, make funny faces and grunt? Only on The Science Channel.
Tip: watch Survivorman
instead; at least youll learn something that might come in handy on the next camping trip. Heres
a suggestion for an episode that might prove too much even for tough guy Les Stroud  surviving as a creationist at
the university.Next headline on:Early Man 
Media 
Theology 
Dumb Ideas

Evolution of the Christmas Tree: Firs Tie Oaks in Fitness Race 12/24/2005
In the struggle for existence, the conifers should have lost, because when angiosperms appeared,
they had fancier valve jobs. Thats the feeling of a story introduced by Elizabeth
Pennisi on Science Now.
Those of us who celebrate Christmas tend to take fir and spruce trees for granted around the
holiday season, she quipped, But without a special modification that allows these trees to
efficiently transport water, we might be hanging our ornaments on a ficus instead, according to a new study.
She explained:

In order for photosynthesis to occur, tall trees must supply their uppermost leaves with water,
which is pulled up from the roots by evaporation. Angiosperms such as oaks and willows accomplish this
using a series of centimeters-long, tube-shaped cellular pipes. Tiny valves made of cellulose
membranes connect each pipe and help keep air bubbles out. Christmas trees and other
conifers have much shorter pipe cells, however, and therefore must use many more valves than
angiosperms. This should create more resistance and make it harder for them to transport water.
But they dont have any trouble at all, says John Sperry, a plant biologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
(Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Sperrys team measured water flow in 18 conifers, including bald cypress, junipers
and redwoods, and compared results with 29 species of angiosperms. There was no
essential difference. Conifers hoisted the water with equal ease, despite the shorter pipe cells.
How do they do it?

The reason, says [Jarmila] Pittermann, has to do with key differences in the valves.
Angiosperm valves are simple membranes full of miniscule pores.
In conifers, the valves consist of a circle of impermeable tissue surrounded by porous
tissue. The conifers pores are 100 times larger than those in angiosperms and
allow water to pass through relatively easily. This efficiency more than makes up for
the additional valves on the way to the tree top, Pittermann says.

The researchers said that this helps scientists understand water transport in wood.
But the work also points to how conifers, which predate angiosperms and are often considered primitive,
were able to survive once angiosperms populated Earth, Pennisi explains.
Without these very special cells, one biologist claimed there wouldnt
be any conifers anymore  presumably because they could not compete against
the angiosperms. The work was published in Science.1 In the
paper, the authors did not explain how or when the unique structure of the conifer valve
evolved. They just said that without the adaptation, angiosperms would have a 38-fold
advantage in water transport:

The superior hydraulics of the conifer pit are crucial for minimizing sapwood resistivity.
If conifer tracheids had the pit resistance of angiosperms, their sapwood resistivity would increase by 38-fold....
This, added to the narrow diameter range of tracheids, would make it much more difficult for conifers to compete
effectively with angiosperms.
.... We conclude that the evolution of the torus-margo membrane within the
gymnosperm lineage from homogenous pits was equivalent to the evolution of vessels within the
angiosperms. The towering redwoods and the sweep of the boreal coniferous forest
exist in no small part because of this clever microscopic valve.

What did evolution have to do with this story, really?
Did it contribute anything of value, even an ornament to hang on the tree? The results were not what evolutionists expected.
Conifers ruled the Jurassic forests, then
along come angiosperms with superior plumbing, and there should have been no contest.
Those old, primitive conifers should have gone the way of the dinosaurs, and our Christmas
trees would look very different. Sweep away the Darwinian mythology, and what remains?
Two well-designed, highly successful groups of plants. They may have different ways of
lifting water, but so what? From a design perspective, it would be just as productive a research program to
find reasons for the difference. Clearly the conifers are doing well. The tallest trees in the world are
conifers (see 04/22/2004). Conifers seem to do even better than angiosperms in
many locations, such as at timberline, where they survive numbing cold storms and snow without
even having to drop their needles. Nobody told them they were at a disadvantage
against the new trees on the block.
The gem of this story is the beautifully-designed
valves in conifers that allow them to pump thousands of gallons of water straight up, hundreds
of feet into the air, to fill our world with beauty and dignity (see photos
#1,
#2,
#3) while adding to the life-giving oxygen in the atmosphere.
Pennisi jokingly entitled her article, The Grinch Who (Almost) Stole Christmas
pitting angiosperms in a phony battle against their friends, the conifers. Not funny. The
Grinch is Charles Darwin.
Next headline on:Plants 
Evolution 
Amazing Stories

Dover Fallout Is Radio Active 12/23/2005
Reaction in the media from Judge Jones stinging decision against intelligent design (ID) in the
Pennsylvania case Kitzmiller vs Dover Area School District has been rapid and
varied. Evolutionists are overjoyed at this Christmas present the
judge delivered, a dirty bomb they hope will put ID out of business, but the other side
claims the damage is minimal and the debate goes on. Here are some samples:

Party Time: Evolutionists were giddy with praise for the decision.
The National
Center for Science Education listed a whos who of educational, scientific
and civil liberties groups who not only approved of the decision but opined that it
would have far-reaching consequences.

Breaking the Point: Conservative Christian commentator Chuck Colson,
on his Breakpoint
radio commentary, said he was disappointed at the ruling, but not disheartened.
Bad cases make bad law, he said, agreeing that the Dover policy was ill advised.
Nevertheless, optimism is justified because if we equip ourselves and do our job,
truth will out, he said. We should not despair. Our case is compelling if
we frame it carefully, ask the right questions, and expose the claims of Darwinists.

Worry but Smile: Michael Powell at the Washington Post (see reprint
on San
Francisco Chronicle) said that ID backers found the ruling worrisome, but vow to
continue pushing the debate forward; William Dembski thinks the future looks bright,
because it is going international and crossing metaphysical and theological boundaries.

Charge Onward: Rachel Zoll for Associated Press (see
Yahoo News)
acknowledged the ruling as a setback for ID, but quoted several ID and Christian leaders
who seem more galvanized than ever over the decision. She acknowledged that the
legal ramifications of the ruling are limited to the Dover area.

Farewell, Partner:
Fox News reported that
U.S. Senator Rick Santorum is severing ties with the
Thomas More Law Center
that defended the Dover
school board, because he thinks they made a huge mistake in taking this case and
in pushing this case to the extent they did.

Principle of the Thing: The
Discovery
Institute also disagreed with the strategy of the school board, not feeling it proper
to mandate the teaching of ID, but also strongly criticized the decision for attempting
to institutionalize dogmatism. John
West said it may be over in Dover, but not for intelligent design:
Efforts to mandate intelligent design are misguided, he clarified, but
efforts to shut down discussion of a scientific idea through harassment and judicial decrees
hurt democratic pluralism. The more Darwinists resort to censorship and persecution,
the clearer it will become that they are championing dogmatism, not science.
Listing himself as former Discovery Institute attorney,
Seth
Cooper issued a statement to set the record straight on his involvement in the case.

Ohio Unaffected: The
Discovery
Institute also issued a statement that the Dover ruling will have no effect on the
Ohio program to allow for critical analysis of evolution. Law professor David DeWolf
explained that not only is Ohio outside the jurisdiction of Judge Jones, but Ohios
program comports with Congressional laws and Supreme Court decisions.
Stephen Dyer agreed that the effect on Ohio is muted, but he wrote for the
Ohio
Beacon Journal, that there still could be ripple effects. Opponents of ID will
take the ball on Jones opinion that singling out evolution for criticism is wrong,
and having even a voluntary program is wrong if instigated from religious motives.

Iowa Debt to ID:
The Scotsman reported
that ID will probably still come up for discussion in Iowa next year, even though board
members disagree about the impact of the Dover decision on their opinions.

Darwinism Corrodes Religion: Columnist David Klinghoffer wrote in the
Seattle
Times that Judge Jones was wrong that Darwinism does not conflict with religious belief.
Klinghoffer quoted leading Darwinists that stated clearly how evolutionary theory is
corrosive to religion and, by positing a materialistic philosophy, is antithetical to
belief in God of any kind, and is therefore a religious philosophy in its own sense.

Lawyer Blog: Albert Alschuler gave his opinion of the case in the
U of Chicago
Law Blog. He chided the court for its contempt for religious belief, saying that
ID should be judged on its merits, not because of what the court felt the motives of the
plaintiffs were. Freedom from psychoanalysis is a basic courtesy, he said.

Undoubtedly this is a small sample of opinions expressed on radio talk shows, TV programs,
newspapers and letters to the editor.

Can we all remember that Judge Jones is just one man?
His complete buy-in to the ACLU side, and complete rejection of all the pro-ID testimony,
shows he is a sadly biased man at that. Isnt it just like liberal leftists
to look to unelected judges to get their power. In no way does this decision reflect
the amount of strong support ID is getting all over the country, and even other nations.
If a vote were taken by most American parents of high school students, Charlie would be put
out on a one-way ship to Christmas Island, along with his blood brother the Grinch.
Next headline on:Darwinism 
Intelligent Design 
Education

Mars Water Evidence Evaporates 12/23/2005
The strongest evidence for water from the Mars rovers has been called into question.
Scientists from the University
of Colorado at Boulder believe that the observations of sulfates and concretions are
better explained by fumaroles in volcanic ash deposits (see also
EurekAlert).
Their paper in Nature1 explains that the model means high temperatures: Consequently, the model invokes an
environment considerably less favourable for biological activity on Mars than previously proposed interpretations.
Another paper in the same issue of Nature2 by scientists from University of Arizona
and Los Alamos proposes rapid turbulent flows caused by meteor impacts produced the deposits,
not periods of long-standing water as was previously assumed. The report by Robert Roy Britt on
Space.com
included a response from Steve Squyres, principal investigator for the Mars Exploration
Rovers. He said he always contended that the water was primarily underground, but thought
that alternative views are good for science. The rovers, by the way, both celebrated their
One Martian Year Anniversary recently (about twice as long as an Earth year).
Both rovers are still going strong (see JPL
press release). Opportunity recovered from a shoulder injury not
long ago. Engineers were able to get the robotic arm working again.
The MER Website has posted
some more special effects
images
in which the rovers are placed into the scene. This one of
Opportunity on Burns Cliff would make a nice Christmas stocking stuffer.
In other Mars news, the first results of the MARSIS instrument
(Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding) on the European orbiter
Mars Express were published in Science.3 The radar instrument
can penetrate the surface for up to a kilometer. Researchers found an underground
impact basin 250 kilometers in diameter, and probed the northern polar ice deposits in
this first-ever survey of the 3rd dimension of Mars.
1McCollom and Hynek, A volcanic environment for bedrock diagenesis at Meridiani Planum on Mars,
Nature
438, 1129-1131 (22 December 2005) | doi:10.1038/nature04390.2Knauth, Burt and Wohletz, Impact origin of sediments at the Opportunity landing site on Mars,
Nature
438, 1123-1128 (22 December 2005) | doi:10.1038/nature04383.3Picardi et al., Radar Soundings of the Subsurface of Mars,
Science,
23 December 2005: Vol. 310. no. 5756, pp. 1925 - 1928, DOI: 10.1126/science.1122165.

Remember the optimistic claims that Opportunity had
found evidence for long-lasting surface water? Remember how the astrobiologists
immediately jumped to the conclusion that Mars probably had good conditions for life?
(Theyre still doing it; see the 11/29 JPL
press release).
It was interesting to hear that the concretions or blueberries that seemed
to clinch the argument for water have another explanation; they are apparently expected
in an impact scenario, when a meteorite strike causes a short-term flood or base
surge that can travel hundreds of kilometers from the impact site.
It may be possible that the H2O on Mars is subsurface ice that might
liquefy during an impact event, only to freeze or vaporize quickly afterward.
Whatever they eventually decide, Mars doesnt have to be lively to be interesting.
Next headline on:Mars 
Geology

Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week 12/22/2005
Two Elizabeths  Culotta and Pennisi  get the award for evolutionary bravado
for their piece in Science.1 They were trumpeting the magazines award of
Breakthrough of the Year to Evolution in Action, a series of
findings that ostensibly help us understand how evolution works. Whether the particular
breakthroughs (the chimp genome, a study on chickadees that seems to support sympatric
speciation, and studies of microbial resistance to antibiotics) actually supported belief
in the common ancestry of all organisms (macroevolution), it didnt seem to quell their
enthusiasm in the slightest:

The big breakthrough, of course, was the one Charles Darwin made a century
and a half ago. By recognizing how natural selection shapes the
diversity of life, he transformed how biologists view the world. But like
all pivotal discoveries, Darwins was a beginning. In the years since
the 1859 publication of The Origin of Species,thousands of researchers
have sketched lifes transitions and explored aspects of evolution Darwin
never knew.
Today evolution is the foundation of all biology, so basic and all-pervasive
that scientists sometimes take its importance for granted. At some level every discovery
in biology and medicine rests on it, in much the same way that all terrestrial vertebrates
can trace their ancestry back to the first bold fishes to explore land. Each year,
researchers worldwide discover enough extraordinary findings tied to evolutionary thinking
to fill a book many times as thick as all of Darwins works put together. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

They didnt seem to pay much attention to the fact that the geneticists and
paleontologists were having a little difficulty in the same issue of the journal (see
next entry). Nor did they pay any notice to the worldwide controversy over Charles
Darwin and his theories. Editor-in-chief Donald Kennedy did notice, however, as he defended
the award:2

Wait a minute, I hear you cry. Hasnt it been a trying year for evolution,
considering the debates about teaching evolutionary theory in science classes in the United States
and the headlines about Intelligent Design? On the contrary; in the research community,
its been a great year for understanding how evolution works, through both experiment and theory.
No single discovery makes the case by itself; after all, the challenge of understanding evolution makes
multiple demands: How can we integrate genetics with patterns of inherited change?
How do new species arise in nature? What can the new science of comparative genomics tell us about
change over time? We have to put the pieces together, and it could not be a more important
challenge: As the evolutionary geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky once said, Nothing in biology
makes sense except in the light of evolution.

One might wonder, then, what scientists are seeing in the dark. Didnt Darwin himself
promise light was coming 146 years ago to shed on most of these same questions?
Kennedy pointed to his favorite example of the new light: a case of microevolution in stickleback fish.
The findings, however meager, are not as important as the process, Kennedy explained:
The exciting thing about evolution, he said,
is not that our understanding is perfect or complete but that it is the foundation
stone for the rest of biology. Other foundation can no man lay than that which
has been laid, apparently. Maybe, though, even intelligent design has a role to play 
like the building inspector (see quote at top right of this page).
Kennedy claimed, Genes that are now known to exert complex effects on body form at the macro level
answer the commonly stated objection that complex structures could not have evolved from simpler
precursors. And so it goes: Scientific challenges are raised, inviting answers.
Hard to disagree with that, but who gets to judge the validity of the answers, if not the challengers?
Other news outlets were quick to pick up on the Breakthrough of the Year
story: MSNBC,
San Diego
Union-Tribune, the Independent
and the BBC News, for instance.
Readers are free to comb these articles for contenders for the SEQOTW award.
1Culotta and Pennisi, Breakthrough of the Year: Evolution in Action,
Science,
23 December 2005: Vol. 310. no. 5756, pp. 1878 - 1879, DOI: 10.1126/science.310.5756.1878.2Donald Kennedy, Editorial: Breakthrough of the Year,
Science,
23 December 2005: Vol. 310. no. 5756, p. 1869, DOI: 10.1126/science.1123757.

Pennisi ought to know better; she has reported on many
an evolutionary crisis (e.g., 12/14/2004,
08/06/2004, 06/13/2003).
To hear these two reporters cackling like spring chickens
over a scrambled Darwin egg is pathetic. None of the breakthroughs listed
bear any real support to the central claim of Darwin that all species descended from a
single common ancestor in the dim, unrepeatable past. Kennedy acknowledged that
scientific challenges have been raised by intelligent design proponents, and that
they invite answers, but look who gets to judge the answers. Its like the kid
getting to grade his own paper, or the defendant getting to play judge and jury, or the
corporate boss getting to set his own salary and benefits.
Its even worse than that. The Darwinists not only control the answers; they
usually control the questions. They even control the language and the definitions
of words. Small wonder that Charlie gets another medal.
Also pathetic was that evolution won Breakthrough of the Year
over more worthy competitors. First runner-up was the Planetary blitz
of dramatic space successes, including the Mars rovers and orbiters, Deep Impact, and
the Cassini-Huygens achievements at Saturn. In this golden age of planetary reconnaissance,
there has been drama, adventure, engineering prowess, and real observational science.
Yet these were slighted by boisterous bluffing that a piece of data here, a controversial
study there amount to vindication of Charlie as he lies a-moulderin' in Westminster Abbey.
Are you stimulated by the possibility that slight changes in stickleback fish promise to
finally show us how humans came from bacteria?
One can only guess that Donald Kennedy and the other Darwin Party hacks at the AAAS
had to perk up the ears of their congregation in light of the uproar outside, and like
the preachers sermon notes scribbled in the margin advised, Point weak 
pound pulpit harder here. Sorry, all you scientists who did great work on
other subjects. Priorities are priorities. Now is the time for all good
Darwinists to come to the aid of their theory. That means strike up
the band and roll it down the parade route,
and conjure up the ghost of Emperor Charlie, so he can play his perennial role of Master of Ceremonies, wearing his
customary robes.
Next headline on:Darwin and Evolutionary Theory 
Dumb Statements

Cambrian Explosion Still Troubling to Evolutionists 12/22/2005
Despite Darwinian efforts to muffle it or spread it into a diffuse rumble, the Cambrian
explosion (the near-sudden emergence of most animal body plans in the fossil record)
was loud and snappy. A new phylogenetic study by Antonis Rokas (MIT), Dirk Krüger, and
Sean B. Carroll (U of Wisconsin), published in Science this week,1 could not rid the models of rapid
evolution across diverse clades, what they call radiations compressed in time.
Their new broad study of gene sequences reached the same verdict as the fossil record.
Their technical terms, translated into plain English, mean that the Cambrian explosion was real:

The phylogenetic relationships among most metazoan phyla remain uncertain.
We obtained large numbers of gene sequences from metazoans, including key understudied
taxa. Despite the amount of data and breadth of taxa analyzed, relationships
among most metazoan phyla remained unresolved. In contrast, the same genes robustly
resolved phylogenetic relationships within a major clade of Fungi of approximately the same age
as the Metazoa. The differences in resolution within the two kingdoms suggest that the
early history of metazoans was a radiation compressed in time, a finding that is in
agreement with paleontological inferences. Furthermore, simulation analyses as well
as studies of other radiations in deep time indicate that, given adequate sequence data, the
lack of resolution in phylogenetic trees is a signature of closely spaced series
of cladogenetic events. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Three other scientists commenting on the story in the same issue of Science2
tried to find ways around the study but were not too successful. Is the
big bang in animal evolution real? they asked. Maybe it can be circumvented
with more data, or with different analytical methods. In light of these concerns,
are the conclusions of Rokas et al. justified? Should we ignore their study?Most certainly not, because they have produced a wealth of data and have shown that it
might just be possible that the fossil record can be reconciled with molecular data.
The resolution, however, was left in future tense (with emphasis on tense).
Rokas et al. did not seem so optimistic.
A press release from University of Wisconsin
underscored Carrolls conclusion that the animal family tree is looking bushy
in places. There were frenetic bursts of evolution he said. Despite their
efforts to resolve the record, instead of a tree, we got a bush where many branches
sprout close together. He said it was hard to distinguish evolutionary events, even
with boatloads of data.
Rokas found a way to put a positive spin on it. The difficulty we are facing in telling
animal relationships apart is evolutions signature that some very interesting evolutionary
stuff happened here, he chuckled.
1Antonis Rokas, Dirk Krüger, Sean B. Carroll, Animal Evolution and the
Molecular Signature of Radiations Compressed in Time,
Science,
23 December 2005: Vol. 310. no. 5756, pp. 1933 - 1938, DOI: 10.1126/science.1116759.2Lars S. Jermiin, Leon Poladian, Michael A. Charleston, Evolution: Is the
Big Bang in Animal Evolution Real?,
Science,
23 December 2005: Vol. 310. no. 5756, pp. 1910 - 1911, DOI: 10.1126/science.1122440.

Very interesting evolutionary stuff, indeed (but
only to a demolition expert). The Darwin Party knows that critics hammer the
point that the Cambrian explosion falsifies evolutionary theory. Oh,
how the Darwinists would love to get around it! These two papers and the news article
show that they cannot. Look at the bars on their timeline, representing the
data: they stack nearly on top of one another. To the left are fictional,
imaginary dashed lines connecting them into a phylogenetic tree, with absolutely
no data, fossil or genetic, to support the inference. Should they be depriving
students of these embarrassing findings? Most textbooks glibly state that
evolution is a fact, and the fossil record proves it. This is a snow job
if there ever was one. Demand accountability.
Next headline on:Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory 
Fossils 
Genes and DNA

How to Overcome Student Objections to Evolution 12/21/2005
Biology teachers face increasing difficulty from students coming into class with bad
feelings about evolution (11/30/2005,
08/30/2005). Many pro-evolution teachers
will be attracted to methods that have a demonstrable
track record of relieving tensions and facilitating the process of getting students to
accept Darwins theory. David Sloan Wilson (Binghamton U, NY) has just the thing.
Writing in PLoS Biology,1 he introduced Evolution for Everyone,
or EvoS for short, with the upbeat title, Evolution for Everyone: How to Increase Acceptance of, Interest in, and
Knowledge about Evolution (compare 11/01/2005 entry
about another suggested method) First, the bad news that made this initiative
necessary:

Evolution is famously controversial, despite being as well established as any
scientific theory. Most people are familiar with the dismal statistics,
showing how a large fraction of Americans at all educational levels do not accept
the theory of evolution, how efforts to teach evolution often fail to have an impact,
and how constant vigilance is required to keep evolution in the public school curriculum.
Even worse, most people who do accept the theory of evolution dont relate
it to matters of importance in their own lives. There appear to be two walls of
resistance, one denying the theory altogether and the other denying its
relevance to human affairs.
(Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Wilson impresses the reader right off the bat with statistics from tests of the EvoS method
at Binghamton University, showing a pronounced shift toward acceptance of evolution among
students, regardless of religious background, familiarity with the theory, or political persuasion.
How did he do it? Wilson describes the multi-pronged approach as focusing on teaching
a sequence of ideas and helping students catch the evolution bug.
From the long article, a few highlights stand out.
For one thing, EvoS does not shy away from controversy, but embraces it as
a teaching opportunity. When students feel threatened by evolution, for instance,
the teacher delves right in. Threatening ideas are like other threats,
Wilson says; the first impulse is to run away or attack them. Make the same ideas
alluring, and our first impulse is to embrace them and make them our own.
OK, so while the teacher is trying to explain how evolution explains the world and helps
provide ways to improve the future, a student objects that evolution has produced a lot
of bad social policies. Now what? Dont dodge the question:

This requires a discussion of past threatening associations,
even before the theory is presented. Evolution has been associated with immorality,
determinism, and social policies ranging from eugenics to genocide. It has been
used to justify racism and sexism. All of these negative associations must be first
acknowledged and then challenged. Its not as if the world was a nice
place before Darwin and then became mean on the basis of his theory.
Before Darwin, religious and other justifications were used to commit the same acts,
as when the American colonists used the principle of divine right to dispossess Native
Americans, and men claimed that women were designed by God and Nature for
domestic servitude. These beliefs are patently self-serving and it should
surprise no one that an authoritative scientific theory would be pressed into the same
kind of service. It is the job of intellectuals to see through such arguments
and not be taken in by them. Moreover, the deep philosophical issues
associated with topics such as morality, determinism, and social equality are increasingly
being approached from a modern evolutionary perspective and are among the topics to be
discussed in the course. When these issues are discussed at the beginning of the course,
students put their own threatening associations with evolution on hold and become
curious to know how a subject that they associate with science (evolution) can
shed light on a subject that they associate with the humanities (philosophy).
Students who indicate exceptional interest are referred to books that are both authoritative and
accessible, such as Daniel Dennetts Darwins Dangerous Idea.

Wilson teaches evolution not as a choice between theology or materialism, but a third way:
a process of change, in which the material organism becomes a kind of living clay
that can be molded by environmental forces that influence survival and reproduction.
This, he explains, enables evolutionary theory to make predictions about how organisms and
populations adapt to their surroundings.
Wilson encourages discussion groups. As another example of facing a
controversial topic head-on, he divides students into groups to discuss infanticide:

Choosing the subject of infanticide, I say that superficially it might seem
that organisms would never evolve to kill their own offspring, but with a little thought
the students might be able to identify situations in which infanticide is biologically
adaptive for the parents. I ask them to form small groups by turning to their neighbors
to discuss the subject for five minutes and to list their predictions on a piece of paper.
After the lists are collected, I ask the students for some of their predictions
to list in front of the whole class. They are eager to talk, and reliably identify
the three major adaptive contexts of infanticide: lack of resources, poor offspring quality,
and uncertain paternity, along with less likely possibilities, such as population regulation,
that can be set aside for future discussion. I conclude by attempting to convey the
simple but profound message of the exercise: How can they, mere undergraduate students, who
know almost nothing about evolution and (one hopes) know nothing at all about infanticide,
so easily deduce the major hypotheses that are in fact employed in the study
of infanticide for organisms as diverse as plants, insects, and mammals? That is
just one example of the power of thinking on the basis of adaptation and natural selection.

Lest one think this is just talking about birds and bees, Wilson makes it clear that a key feature
of EvoS is encouraging students to see human beings as integrally involved in the evolutionary process:

One of the biggest tactical errors in teaching evolution is to avoid discussing humans
or to restrict discussion to remote topics such as human origins. The question of how we
arose from the apes is fascinating and important, but is only one of any number of questions
that can be asked about humans from an evolutionary perspectiveincluding infanticide.
If evolutionary theory can make sense of this subject for organisms as diverse as plants, insects,
and mammals, what about us? If we operate by different rules than all other creatures for
this and other subjects, why should this be so? The most common answer to this question
is learning and culture, but what exactly are these things? Do they exist apart
from evolution, or do they themselves need to be explained from an evolutionary perspective?
I raise these issues early in the course, not to answer them, but to emphasize how much is
on the table as part of the course.

Wilson says that for millennia, people have considered humankind categorically different from other
creatures in their mental, moral and aesthetic abilities. We are obviously unique in some
respects, he acknowledges, but in exactly what way needs to be completely rethought.
Students are encouraged to view human infanticide along the same lines as they did for animals,
and to do the same for human warfare, learning, and culture  all of which the teacher can
demonstrate are present in varying degrees in the natural world.
Such directness might seem worrisome to a biology teacher. Wilson reassures
the reader that, in practice, the method actually produces compliant students:

It might seem that boldly discussing subjects such as human infanticide (which the students
quickly connect to the contemporary issue of abortion), along with other topics such as sex
differences and homosexuality later in the course, is the ultimate in political
incorrectness. However, I have taught this material for many years in prior courses
without a single complaint, and the assessment of Evolution for Everyone demonstrates
an overwhelmingly positive response across the religious and political spectrum. Clearly,
there is a way to proceed that arouses intense interest without animosity or moral outrage.
In the case of infanticide, evolutionary theory doesnt say that its rightit
is used to make an informed guess about when it occurs. All of the students want to know
if the guess proves to be correct for humans in addition to other creatures,
regardless of their moral stance on abortion. Moreover, they see that the information can be
useful for addressing the problem, whatever particular solution they have in mind.
The importance of culture is not denied, but becomes part of the evolutionary framework
rather than a vaguely articulated alternative. The picture that emerges makes sense
of cases of infanticide that appear periodically in the news (typically young women with few
resources and under the influence of a male partner who is not the father) and that previously
seemed inexplicable. Nearly everyone values this kind of understanding and thinks
that it can be put to positive use, as demonstrated by the quantitative assessment. More
generally, including humans along with the rest of life vastly increases students
interest in evolution and acceptance to the degree that it seems to lead to understanding
and improvement of the human condition.

Wilson continues; evolutionary changes are not always adaptive, nor are they always benign.
Fitness is a relative and local concept, he explains. It doesnt matter
how well an organism survives and reproduces, only that it does so better than other organisms in
its vicinity. Overall, the teacher presents evolution as practical for explaining the
observations without making any moral judgments. But then, what about morality? Thats
part of our evolution, too, as more group discussion helps the students realize:

If behaviors regarded as immoral in human terms are adaptive and natural,
then arent all the fears about evolution justified? Nobecause behaviors that
are regarded as moral in human terms are also adaptive and natural under the right
circumstances, which can be illustrated with the following exercise of the sort suggested by
Nelson and Alters. First, the class is asked to list the behaviors that they associate with
morality. The most common items include altruism, honesty, love, charity, sacrifice,
loyalty, bravery, and so on. Then they are asked to list behaviors that they associate with
immorality, and respond with opposite items such as selfishness, deceit, hatred, miserliness,
and cowardice. With these lists in mind, the students are asked three questions: (1)
What would happen if you put a single moral individual and a single immoral individual
together on a desert island? (The students quickly conclude that the moral individual
would become shark food within days.) (2) What would happen if you put a group of moral
individuals on one island and a group of immoral individuals on another island?
(The students are equally quick to conclude that the moral group would work together to escape the
island or turn it into a little utopia, while the immoral group would self-destruct.) (3) What
would happen if you allow one immoral individual to paddle over to Virtue Island? (The
answer to this question is complex because it is a messy combination of the straightforward answers
to the first two questions.)

The students learn, then, that situational ethics pop right out of evolutionary theory.
This exercise is simple and entertaining, he says, but profound in
its implications. It shows that most of the traits associated with human morality can be
biologically adaptive. Students are assured that a quasi-traditional morality,
including altruism and honesty (except for the occasional freeloader or non-cooperator) is a natural
consequence of natural selection within groups. Alas, the teacher must admit that group selection
can lead to a disturbing corollary. Cant behaviors that count as moral within groups
be used for immoral purposes among groups? The answer to this question is yes,
which means that moral conduct among groups is a different and more difficult evolutionary problem
to solve than moral conduct within groups. By this time, students understand that
scientists should one day be able to figure this out by such a useful, predictive theory as
natural selection.

The important point is that evolutionary theory can potentially explain the evolution of behaviors
associated with morality and immorality. This is vastly different than the usual portrayal
of evolution as a theory that explains immorality but leaves morality unaccounted for.
The average student is well aware that immoral behaviors usually benefit the actor, that human groups
have a disturbing tendency to confine moral conduct to their own members, and so on. When
evolutionary theory is presented as a framework for understanding these patterns in all their complexity,
including the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly, it is perceived as a tool for understanding
that can be used for positive ends, rather than as a threat.

So you see, students, evolutionary theory should not be threatening. Its just a tool,
a neutral way of looking at the natural world (including ourselves), so that we can explain a wide
variety of observations that before Darwin seemed inexplicable. Its time to get into
the heavy stuff:

At this point (about mid-semester), the students are told that they have acquired a conceptual
framework that can be used to study virtually any subject in biology and human affairs, which
will be used to study particular topics for the rest of the semester. There is great flexibility
in the topics that can be chosen, which is facilitated by having the students read,
rather than a textbook, well-chosen articles from the primary scientific literature.

(It can be safely assumed that Wilson does not have in mind sources like Of Pandas and People).
The enlightened student is now ready to think about Darwinian medicine, and topics as diverse as
violence, sexuality, personality, and culture to see what insights evolutionary thinking
can provide. They realize that they have started to approach the study of humans in the
way that evolutionary biologists approach the rest of life, with a common language that
can be spoken across many domains of knowledge. They have arrived.
One more thing: the student gets to choose his or her own topic and write it up in
evolutionary terms. Suggestions: adoption, alcoholism, attractiveness, body piercing,
depression, eating disorders, fashion, fear, hand dominance, homosexuality, marriage, play, sexual
jealousy, sibling rivalry, social roles, suicide, video games, and yawning. As
Dobzhansky famously remarked, nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.

To summarize, Evolution for Everyone works by establishing a general conceptual framework through a sequence of ideas. The framework is then strengthened and consolidated by applying it to a number of specific topics. Virtually all students respond to the class because they cease to be threatened by evolutionary theory and begin to perceive it as a powerful way to understand and improve the world. Once the theory becomes alluring, the only remaining obstacle to learning is the intrinsic difficulty of the subject. That, it turns out, is not much of an obstacle either. Almost anyone can master the basic principles of evolution and incorporate them into their own thinking, providing both a foundation and an incentive to advance their knowledge in subsequent courses.

Speaking of subsequent courses, Wilson is thinking way outside the box of high school or college
biology. First, he encourages students who have caught the evolution bug to
spread their newfound interests into a campus-wide program. The anthropology, psychology,
economics and philosophy departments, with help from the administration, can all merge their
evolutionary ideas into a cohesive picture, transcending traditional disciplinary boundaries.
Special seminars can be held. Students can earn special EvoS certificates by completing
required courses. Faculty advisors can counsel each student to develop a curriculum
tailored to his or her interests from the menu of offerings.
One last obstacle: other faculty. Though most of them already ridicule creationism,
Wilson contends that most of them dont yet see the relevance of evolution to their disciplines.
His plan, therefore, includes faculty training as well as student training, so that the university
becomes a single intellectual community.

In many ways, this type of experience approaches the ideal of a liberal arts education.
It should be especially appealing to small colleges that have difficulty achieving a critical
mass in single subject areas. Evolutionary theory is not the only common language,
but it is a very good one that will eventually become part of the normal discourse for
all subject areas relevant to human affairs and the natural world.

In James Clavells chilling tale
The Childrens Story,
(a must read before continuing this commentary), the New Teacher comes to class
after the conquest (presumably a communist takeover). She takes a frightened group
of children and calms them into becoming compliant, trusting citizens. In just
23 minutes, she has gently and effectively dismantled their patriotism, their faith,
their family loyalty and their most cherished beliefs before they even know what hit
them. A well-trained, master manipulator, she is not a teacher: she is a facilitator,
a guarantor of compliance with the new regime, an electrician who has cut off power from the resistance.
She is just as much an arm of the State as the soldier on the battlefield, and perhaps
even more effective. This is not education. It is indoctrination with finesse.
David Sloan Wilson is talking about college students, not children.
They are a more difficult lot to indoctrinate, but the parallels with the New Teacher
are striking. Consider a few:

Teach only one side. Wilsons method depends on carefully controlling
what the students hear. The New Teachers success depended on first removing Miss Worden,
the Old Teacher, before she could say anything. A debate with Miss Worden might have led
to very unacceptable results, so it was essential to dispense with her quickly and quietly.
With EvoS, unlike with Verheys inoculation technique
(11/01/2005), which at least gave the students a carefully measured taste
of a contrary viewpoint, Wilson acknowledges that evolution is famously controversial
but gives voice only to the Darwinist propaganda. This is indoctrination by definition.
He prescribes well-chosen articles from the primary scientific literature
(read: DODO, for Darwin-only, Darwin-only). Notice his favorite recommended reading:
Darwins Dangerous Idea, in which Daniel Dennett advocated putting creationists in zoos,
or otherwise eliminating them, since they are a threat to the regime.

Eliminate the negative. The New Teacher knew that the children were afraid
and had heard bad things about the conquerors, so she was quick to allay their fears by
distraction  singing, complimenting the children, disarming them with friendliness,
and other tactics  while sidestepping the evils her regime was doing in the background.
Similarly, Wilsons first step is to confront the students fears about the implications
of evolutionary philosophy (including eugenics and genocide)
by soft-pedaling the history and implying were all in
this together. Why look, Christians have done many bad things, too. Its
not like the world was a nice place before Darwin came along. EvoS tries to
disconnect evolution from its historic disastrous consequences by selling it as only a neutral,
objective, unbiased, useful, scientific, explanatory tool. Sure, some people might misuse it,
but that doesnt make it bad now, does it children?

Euphemize. Johnnys daddy didnt believe bad things,
just wrong things. Daddy and Miss Worden were not going to concentration camps
(or worse), just to school (remember how the communists called this
re-education? A little brainwashing, a little torture, some mind-altering
drugs  all very effective). EvoS helps us understand morality.
It helps us understand how we are all a part of nature. It helps us improve the human
condition. The new regime is nothing to be afraid of; why, it is just a tool for
understanding that can be used for positive ends, rather than as a threat.

Confront. The New Teacher stops them in the middle of the pledge and asks
them, what does it mean? What does pledge mean? What does allegiance mean?
Those are good questions, but she didnt define them like Red Skelton did in a famous
monologue. She asked the questions not to answer them, but to raise doubts about what
they had been taught. Wilson confronts the students with questions about abortion and
infanticide, not to make them think critically, but to draw them into his net: its all
about evolution. Evolution explains infanticide. Evolution explains abortion.
Evolution explains yawning. Evolution explains everything.

Disarm. The New Teacher did not charge through the door as the ogre or beast the children
feared; she was dressed neatly, smiled, and greeted them by name. She sang them a song.
She sympathized with their fears. She gave them candy, demonstrating that prayers to Our
Leader are legitimate prayers, but only if a human being actually answers. Under the sweet surface was
a hideous assault on their freedoms and values. Similarly, Wilsons Virtue Island game is a subtle form
of mind control. It simultaneously oversimplifies the issue of morality and teaches moral
relativism, while denying any opportunity for rebuttal. EvoS keeps the tone happy and
positive by utilizing discussion groups, giving the students games to play, and rewarding
compliant students with certificates for completing the brainwashing.

Dismantle. Clavells schoolchildren fondled their little pieces of the
flag, oblivious to what The New Teacher had done in cutting it up and giving them each a
piece of it. Then, amidst shrieks of excitement, the children tossed the flagpole out the window
with their own hands. Wilson starts by saluting virtue and pledging allegiance to morality, but then he
proceeds to cut it up and hand out the pieces by getting the students to slowly agree that
it, too, is a product of evolution. Since people evolved  since everything evolved
 then, well, morality evolved, too. Isnt evolution a wonderful and powerful theory?

Think Big. At 9:23, the New Teacher was warmed ... by the thought that
throughout the school and throughout the land all children, all men and all women were being
taught with the same faith, with variations of the same procedures. Each according to his
age group. Each according to his need. Utilizing techniques appropriate for college
students, EvoS promulgates the same faith that children and adults will get. While
focusing in this article on the college age group, Wilson understands the big agenda of the regime.
He sees beyond EvoS to the entire intellectual program of the university, and of the world.
Evolution is to become the campus-wide common language the conceptual framework
for the liberal arts and humanities, the lens through which all knowledge will be sifted.
Debate wont have a chance, because the Ministry of Truth will control the dictionary and the history
textbook. There will be no controversy, for everyone will have completed the required brainwashing
sessions, from freshmen to faculty. It will be... Utopia.

If you were swayed by David Sloan Wilsons article, and thought it sounded like a nice
program, there might still be hope, but it will require desperate measures. Brainwashing
is a serious mental disorder. Undoing its effects requires rescue and deprogramming. The stakes in this
intellectual takeover that the Darwinists are advocating could not be higher. Wilson,
PLoS Biology, the NCSE, and Big Science in general have their sights set on nothing less
than totalitarian rule. It is not a matter of debating peers, or winning in the free marketplace of ideas.
This is an agenda for wage and price controls, for one-party rule, and for dictatorial power
over the means of idea production. John Stuart Mill, the atheist-empiricist utilitarian
philosopher (a friend of Darwin), the father of the open marketplace of ideas, would be appalled.
Pay him no mind; he was just a product of evolution, too, and his ideas have no external
validity apart from evolution. Evolution is all; all is evolution.
Any view trying to encompass morality, philosophy, religion,
anthropology, psychology, economics, history, sexual ethics, culture, eating disorders, video
games and even yawning has long ceased to be just a biological theory.
Evolution for Everyone is a complete and total world view: a powerful way
to understand and improve the world including deep philosophical issues associated
with topics such as morality, determinism, and social equality. Like a communist ideal
State, it is the machine of history. Students are expendable; they must be molded into obedient
pawns of the regime.
The first step in deprogramming is to realize youve been had.
If you still have some control of your rational faculties, consider that this evolutionary indoctrination
program falsifies itself. Wilson talks about morality, but makes morality a by-product
of a mindless, relativistic, unguided process that succeeds by squashing the unfit. What is
right or wrong in such a world? Obviously, it could
be anything, including cruelty or genocide. There is no such thing as a Virtue Island.
He cannot define groups of moral and immoral people without borrowing vocabulary from a religion or
philosophy that believes in absolutes. In philosophical dualism or pantheism,
yin and yang are morally indistinguishable. Moral categories are in the eye of the
beholder. The immoral group can call itself the moral group without any guilt or
contradiction, because evolution is what evolution does. Whatever it does is
good, whatever that means.

Richard Weikart in From Darwin to Hitler underscored the
chilling point that Hitler sincerely believed he was doing the right thing. He was
not amoral; he did what he did from a deeply held conviction based on what he believed evolutionary
ethics demanded (and remember, he got willing compliance from the intellectual leaders and
scientists of his daysee 04/07/2005). Hitlers
views are disdained by evolutionists today  but on what basis?
If they say Hitler was wrong to murder 11 million people, challenge them to
define wrong without reference to absolute standards of morality. It cannot be done.
Weikart explains, Darwinism provided no basis to consider some forms of morality
better than any other, or for that matter, it gave no reason to think that morality
was better in any real sense than immorality (p. 229).
Likewise, Wilson cannot claim moral equivalence between the evils committed by
Christians and Darwinists. It is undeniable that so-called Christians have
committed atrocities. For one thing, however, the differences in scale are mind-boggling
(see 11/30/2005 and also the January 2006 issue of
National Geographic which, although underreporting communist democides by over 50%,
still shows Darwin-inspired communism and Nazism outstripping any religious-inspired murders by orders of magnitude).
The body counts simply cannot be compared. Furthermore, it is impossible to derive genocide
or other moral evils from the teachings of Jesus Christ, who taught that we should love one another
and turn the other cheek and pray for those who persecute us. There is, by contrast, a very logical, plausible
line of reasoning from the premise of survival of the fittest to a Hitler or Stalin.
This is important to ponder for year 2006. Dont think for a minute that the atrocities
inherent in Darwin-inspired politics were exhausted in the 20th century.

The EvoS talk about morality, therefore, is self-defeating and
self-refuting. What else do you need to know about
Wilsons utopian vision?
How about the way EvoS shields the students eyes from all the controversies between
Darwinists? EvoS espouses the game-theoretic, environmental approach to evolutionary theory
when other ardent Darwinians would disagree strongly with it on numerous points (except for the
mantra, evolution is a fact).
Would you trust any teacher who takes a tattered hodgepodge of chopped-up guts and blood and
toxin and packages it neatly to sell as a delicious sausage that will improve your health?
Wilson is all bluffing and no credibility. You have been taken in by a cult.
Its a dangerous cult. It is Darwins Dangerous Idea. If you listen to the
New Teacher and the regime she represents, realize that life will be sweet only as long
as you comply. Try to disagree with them after they have achieved all power, and they
will put you in the zoo. Thats if you are one of the lucky ones.
We cant afford to be little Johnnys with only a nebulous hate that somehow gives us
strength in the face of some perceived threat we dont understand but have
been told to fear. As Clavell showed, it was only a matter of time
before Johnny succumbed. If the regime succeeds in rewriting history, defining terms and
violating our rationality, as Orwell showed, its only a matter of time before Winston acquiesced
and confessed, from his heart, that he loved Big Brother. Sir
Francis Bacon said, knowledge
is power. Know your history. Know your science. Understand philosophy,
theology, the history of ideas, and the art of reasoning. Practice the skill of
baloney detecting. Thankfully, the Darwin Borg has not yet
become powerful enough to assimilate by physical coercion; this means that, so far, only weak minds are
susceptible. Till then, knowledge is the best defense against a seemingly overwhelming
force that is turning brainwashing into a fine art.
Next headline on:Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory 
Politics and Ethics 
Education

Judge Rules ID Unconstitutional 12/20/2005
Judge John E. Jones III gave his ruling on the Dover school board case in favor of the plaintiffs,
as expected. His wording against the board was strident, even accusing them of lying about
their religious motives for including intelligent design (ID) as an alternative to
evolution. He spoke of the breathtaking inanity of the school boards policy,
and claimed the citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of
the board who voted for the ID policy that required a statement be read by school
administrators in biology classes disclaiming evolution as a fact and mentioning an
alternative text that would be available for interested students. We conclude
that the religious nature of ID would be readily apparent to an objective observer, adult
or child, the judge said. MSNBC News reported:

Jones blasted the disclaimer, saying it singles out the theory of evolution for special
treatment, misrepresents its status in the scientific community, causes students to doubt its
validity without scientific justification, presents students with a religious alternative
masquerading as a scientific theory, directs them to consult a creationist text as though it
were a science resource and instructs students to forgo scientific inquiry in the public school
classroom and instead to seek out religious instruction elsewhere.
(Emphasis added in all quotes.)

(See also LiveScience.)
Judge Jones clearly embraced all the arguments of the plaintiffs and their witnesses, lawyers and
scientists, and accepted none of those on the other side. He tried to pre-empt claims that his ruling would
be viewed as the product of an activist judge by claiming the only activists were
the members of the Dover school board. Bill OReilly on Fox News didnt hesitate
to accuse him of being an activist judge, shaking his head in disbelief at the ruling, as did
his guest Judge Napolitano: now, just mentioning the idea of a designer in a public school class,
without specifying anything about said designer, without requiring any testing or assignments on
it, but just informing students that an alternative theory exists, is unconstitutional.
The Fox News segment mentioned that Jones is a Republican appointed by President Bush. It also
noted that Jones added insult to injury by forcing the defendants to pay all the plaintiffs
legal bills, probably astronomical, a move which will likely have a chilling effect on other school boards wanting
to test the waters on intelligent design. It is also unlikely this ruling will be appealed,
since the board members who instituted the policy were voted out of office in last months
election (11/09/2005). That also means the ruling will remain
limited to the central Pennsylvania district where the trial occurred.
The
Discovery
Institute was quick to respond, calling the ruling a futile attempt to censor
science education. Articles by Jonathan Witt and John West soon followed;
the very one-sided ruling is bound to generate a great deal of polarized commentary.
Access
Research Network found it surprising that the ruling not only prohibited offering
ID as an alternative to evolution, but even made it unconstitutional to criticize evolution in
any way: To preserve the separation of church and state mandated by the Establishment Clause
of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the ruling stated,
we will enter an order permanently enjoining Defendants from maintaining the ID Policy
in any school within the Dover Area School District, from requiring teachers to denigrate or
disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a
religious, alternative theory known as ID. Leaders in the ID movement see the
Dover trial as a poor test case that will probably not be the last.
See also the Fox News
report and a commentary on it by Tom Magnuson at
Access
Research Network.

Given the nature of the case, a ruling in favor of the
board would have been surprising. But Jones went overboard; his ruling is so full of bluster and emotion,
it sounds like another bluffing shout before the dying gasp of the materialists wanting to maintain their stranglehold
on education and to police student brains against entertaining doubts about the authority of
Pope Charlie, a shriek by the wicked witch threatening death to her captives before the water
of scientific evidence makes her melt away. Undoubtedly Jones did not want to soil his reputation among the
scientific elitists. Now he can continue to party with his liberal friends without
them calling him the judge that destroyed science. He may have rescued his reputation for the short
term, but in the long term of history, his ruling may well be cited as the epitome of activism,
of judicial meddling in science and philosophy.
Already, columnists like Dennis Byrne in the
Chicago
Tribune are wondering, what is so scary about intelligent design?
What are the DODOs (Darwin Only! Darwin Only!) so afraid of? If their theory is
rock solid, it should stand any scrutiny and critical analysis. Anything that has
to be so protected that no one can even be allowed to consider that alternatives exist
is going to look silly in due time.
Perhaps some onlookers will feel pity for the losers, wondering what all
the fuss was about, and why it generated so much rancor. The fuss will continue,
and judges can be overruled. Why? Politics? Religious activism?
No: because evidence cannot be suppressed indefinitely.
Remember, in Georgia already, Judge Clarence Coopers similar ruling against the
disclaimer stickers is being viewed by the appeals court as gratuitous and contrary to the
evidence (12/16/2005). The NCSE may find Joness ruling to
be a pyrrhic victory. The important thing is that design in nature is ignoring the
decision. It is so ubiquitous at all scales (see next two entries for examples),
it cannot be hidden forever by mountains of rhetoric. The glacier grinds on.
Next headline on:Darwinism and Evolution 
Intelligent Design 
Education 
Politics and Ethics

Undersea Christmas Lights Explained 12/19/2005
There is a marine animal like a jellyfish that puts on one of the most dazzling light shows in
nature. Some ctenophores, or comb jellies, can send multi-colored pulses of light
that radiate down their sides in a rainbow of colors. If youve ever seen one of these on a TV nature
show, you were probably stunned and asked, How does it do that? Three scientists
from Oxford and Paris were intrigued by the spectacular iridescence of these
comb jellies and decided to find out. The first thing they found out was that nobody
had ever explained it before.
Their investigation, published in Current Biology,1
concluded that the effect is part photochemical and part structural. The
animals have rows of specialized cilia associated with light-producing (bioluminescent)
organs. The cilia are arranged in precise formations such that they act as photonic
crystals that can concentrate particular wavelengths of light
(this mechanism also operates in bird feathers and butterfly wings; see
11/18/2005).
The color seen by an observer depends on the angle of the photonic crystals along
the line of sight. As the cilia beat in synchronized patterns down the sides, this angle
changes, causing the colors to change in wavy patterns down their sides. The result is
a dazzling undersea light show:

Our results show that the observed colouration of the ctenophore Beroë cucumis
can be explained by the structure described, which operates as a photonic crystal.
This is the first time a photonic crystal composed of cilia has been reported.
The parallelogrammatic cilial packing is also new: the two-dimensional photonic
crystals previously described have had hexagonally, squarely or rectangularly packed components.Remarkably, our results indicate that this structure is optimised not
only for reflection of ambient light to generate bright colouration across the visible spectrum,
but also to transmit light of wavelengths around that of the organisms bioluminescence. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Since ctenophores lack eyes, the scientists figure these function as a
deterrent to predators. The researchers hope by learning about the design of these
light-producing structures, inventors might find useful applications: A photonic crystal
is a rare type of colour-producing structure, they said, composed of a regularly
repeating structure with dimensions a fraction of the wavelength of light, complex optical
properties and large commercial potential.
1Welch, Vigneron and Parker, The cause of colouration in the ctenophore Beroë cucumis,
Current Biology,
Volume 15, Issue 24, 24 December 2005, Pages R985-R986.

Watch for these on the next undersea nature program on
TV; the light show truly is spectacular as the authors describe it (click
here for an image gallery,
but to be fully appreciated, the lights must be seen in action).
Ctenophore lighting is another useless wonder of nature that appears to be overkill
simply for evading predators. The world is a vast treasure chest of ingenious solutions to
physical problems that challenge our own intelligence to understand. Approaching
these phenomena from a design perspective not only helps explain them, but also leads to
what Francis Bacon called experimenta fructifera,
fruitful experiments that can improve our lives. For more thoughts by William
Dembski on intelligent design and biomimetics, particularly regarding
the Vorticella spring (12/13/2005), see
Uncommon Descent.
Next headline on:Marine Biology 
Physics 
Amazing Stories

Choose You This Day: Multiverse or I.D. 12/18/2005
If Leonard Susskind is right, cosmologists are escaping the conclusion of intelligent
design (ID) by backing into a radically speculative idea: a near infinity of universes.
Susskind, a theoretical physicist from Stanford, just published a book, Cosmic Landscape: String Theory
and the Illusion of Intelligent Design (Little, Brown 2005), that explores current
cosmological thinking about the Anthropic Principle  the observation that the constants
of physics in our universe appear finely tuned to make stars, planets and life possible.
Susskind was interviewed by Amanda Gefter in
New Scientist.
Susskind spoke as if he and other cosmologists have been forced into the
concept of a multiverse (multitude of universes, of which our entire universe is just
one sample) because the fine-tuning problem wont go away. Try as they might,
physicists cannot come up with a theory that explains why the constants are the way they
are. All they know is that, were they different, life would be impossible in our
universe. Initially, string theory seemed to allow for a million possible vacuum
states that would have determined the type of universe that emerged. That was not
enough, Susskind thought; getting one life-giving universe out of a million was still too
improbable. When two physicists upped the number of vacuum states to 10500,
Susskind became a believer. Out of that many universes, surely some would have
the anthropic conditions for life. We notice ours does, because were in it.
Intelligent design could remain just an illusion, therefore, because uncountable
numbers of other universes exist with random values for the physical constants.
When Susskind started sharing this idea, The initial
reaction was very hostile, but over the past couple of years people are taking it
more seriously, he said. They are worried that it might be true.
Cosmologist Stephen Weinberg considers it one of the great sea changes in fundamental
science since Einstein, a radical change that alters the nature of science itself.

In a way it is very radical but in another way it isnt. The great ambition of
physicists like myself was to explain why the laws of nature are just what they are.
Why is the proton just about 1800 times heavier than the electron? Why do neutrinos exist?
The great hope was that some deep mathematical principle would determine all
the constants of nature, like Newtons constant. But it seems increasingly
likely that the constants of nature are more like the temperature of the Earth  properties
of our local environment that vary from place to place. Like the temperature, many of the
constants have to be just so if intelligent life is to exist. So we live where life is possible.
(Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Susskind remarked that the conclusion of a vast ensemble of universes came as a disappointment
to many physicists. He himself finds the idea that reality might be vaster than
we ever imagined exciting. It doesnt destroy the hope for a
grand unified theory, he claims; now, the challenge is not to explain just our universe,
but the entire array of all possible universes. Unfortunately, another disappointment
is the realization there appears to be no principle of natural selection among the universes that
would favor the life-giving types. There is no evidence for this view, he
admitted; Even most of the hard-core adherents to the uniqueness view admit that
it looks bad. Furthermore, Susskind is unconvinced by appeals to exotic forms
of life that might exist without worlds; in my heart of hearts, he said with
resignation, I just dont believe that life could exist in the interior of a star,
for instance, or in a black hole.
Susskind denied that belief in a multiverse
will bring on the Popperazzi  those who follow Karl Poppers
teaching that an idea must be falsifiable to be scientific. His reason?
Undetectable universes are no more metaphysical than claiming our universe is homogeneous,
including the parts beyond our observational horizon. He even suggested ways to
test it, such as looking for evidence of negative curvature that might suggest our
universe tunneled from one vacuum state to another.
Last, Gefter asked him if we are stuck with intelligent design
if we do not accept his landscape hypothesis.

I doubt that physicists will see it that way. If, for some unforeseen reason,
the landscape turns out to be inconsistent  maybe for mathematical reasons, or
because it disagrees with observation  I am pretty sure that physicists will
go on searching for natural explanations of the world. But I have to say that
if that happens, as things stand now we will be in a very awkward position.
Without any explanation of natures fine-tunings we will be hard pressed to answer
the ID critics. One might argue that the hope that a mathematically
unique solution will emerge is as faith-based as ID.

A blogger named David Heddle on HeLives.com,
with reformed views of a nuclear physicist, found Susskinds remarks
in this interview profoundly unsatisfying; To save materialism, he quipped,
Susskind argues that we must explain this fine-tuning, and his landscape has the
best chance of playing the role of a white knight.
George Ellis (U of Cape Town) also reviewed the book for Nature
last week.1 He quipped about how physicists used to deal with real,
observable stuff; Nowadays things have changed, he said. A phalanx
of heavyweight physicists and cosmologists are claiming to prove the existence of
other expanding universe domains even though there is no chance of observing them,
nor any possibility of testing their supposed nature except in the most tenuous, indirect
way. Ellis confirms that Susskind argues for the multiverse because of the
anthropic issue: the apparent miracles of physics and cosmology that make our
existence possible. The only way out was to posit a large enough set of random
combinations of universes such that the incredibly special conditions for life to
exist will inevitably occur somewhere in the multiverse. It follows,
then, that The apparent design of conditions favourable to life in our own universe
domain can therefore be explained in a naturalistic way.
What does Ellis think about this argument? He is uncomfortable that
it is neither testable nor predicted from well-established physics. It is also
a vacuous answer: if all possibilities exist somewhere in the multiverse, as some claim,
then it can explain any observations, whatever they are. Ellis finds the
test that Susskind proposes only partially in its favor, but even then, the data are
not exactly supportive. He finds this a symptom of some present-day cosmology,
where faith in theory tends to trump evidence. He also disparages
the use of infinities with gay abandon and the use of the many-worlds
hypothesis of quantum mechanics for support, an unproven and totally profligate
viewpoint that many find difficult to take seriously. Speaking of faith,
Ellis waxes philosophical on the subject  even theological  gently chiding
Susskind for lack of scientific rigor:

As a philosophical proposal, the multiverse idea is interesting and has considerable
merit. The challenge facing cosmologists now is how to put on a
sound basis the attempts to push science beyond the boundary where verification is possible
 and what label to attach to the resultant theories. Physicists indulging
in this kind of speculation sometimes denigrate philosophers of science, but
they themselves do not yet have rigorous criteria to offer for proof of physical existence.
This is what is needed to make this area solid science, rather than speculation.
Until then, the multiverse situation seems to fit St Pauls description: Faith
is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
In this case, it is faith that enormous extrapolations from tested physics
are correct; hope that correct hints as to the way things really are have been
identified from all the possibilities, and that the present marginal evidence to the
contrary will go away. This book gives a great overview of this important terrain,
as seen from an enthusiasts viewpoint.

Read this as a stunning defeat by the materialists
and a victory for intelligent design. In a debate, when your opponents
only retreat is to espouse an absurd position, you know you are winning. Like
bugs scrambling for cover when a rotting log is lifted, the materialists are avoiding
the light of intelligent design at all costs. They call to speculative mountains and
rocks, saying, Fall on us, and hide us from the design inference, for the
light of fine-tuning has come, and who is able to stand?
To clarify one mistake in Susskinds last quote, ID is not
faith-based, except in the sense of putting faith in the uniformity of experience.
ID makes a design inference when specified complexity is detected. The specification
in this case is the precision of the values of physical constants which permit the existence of
stars, planets and life. Susskind conceded the point that there does not
seem to be any way that the correct values were determined; i.e., the constants
appear contingent, not necessary. In most universes, random values would make
life impossible. A straightforward application of ID reasoning follows.
There is a specification, there is low probability  the universe, therefore, was designed.
Susskind cannot escape Poppers falsification criterion by claiming others
violate it, too. That doesnt work with cops, nor with scientific
requirements. The Popperazzi have a warrant to arrest his landscape hypothesis
on the grounds it is unfalsifiable.
This entry can also be taken as a resounding endorsement of claims made
in the film and book The Privileged
Planet. The second part of the film argued that the fine-tuning of the
universe implies intelligent design. In the Q&A portion, William Lane Craig emphasized
how precise the tuning is, and dealt squarely with the opposition tactic of retreating
into a multitude of universes; he said that cosmologists have been driven
beyond physics to metaphysics to the extraordinary position of
postulating an infinite ensemble of universes, all in order
to rescue the materialistic, chance hypothesis from the evidence.
Guillermo Gonzalez followed up by stating the obvious: this idea cannot be scientific,
because there is no way to test it. Its a metaphysical response to the
physics we observe. To this we add, Susskinds
proposed test is circular, because it depends on the very materialistic assumptions
that are being contested. Materialism is being debated; the observation
of fine-tuning is not.
The admissions made by Susskind in this interview provide all the more
reason to hand out copies of the Privileged Planet DVD to skeptical friends and
invite them to think about it. Now you can print out copies of this New
Scientist interview as supportive material, and ask the skeptic if he or she finds
the multiverse escape clause as awkward as Susskind describes it, or more faith-based
than following the evidence to its logical conclusion.
Come
to the light can be an appropriately modern invitation to the cosmological sinner.
Next headline on:Cosmology 
Physics 
Intelligent Design

Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week 12/17/2005
This weeks entry comes from an article by Richard Robinson, a freelance science
writer, on the origin of life. It was printed last month in PLoS Biology
(see next headline). It is a prime illustration of the assumption on the part of
many evolutionists that Darwins theory of natural selection is omnipotent:

Beginning with a single cell, Darwinian evolution provides a simple, robust, and
powerful algorithm for deriving all the astonishing richness of life, from
bacteria to brains. Natural selection and other evolutionary forces,
acting on surplus populations of replicating cells and multicellular organisms,
lead inevitably to evolution and adaptation. Give biologists a cell,
and theyll give you the world. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Evolution is not an algorithm. Evolution is not
a force. Evolution is not inevitable. Evolution cannot deliver the world.
That being understood, we will grant Richard a little slack for telling a funny joke right
before this quote:

A physicist, a chemist, and a mathematician are stranded on a desert isle, when a can
of food washes up on the beach. The three starving scientists suggest, in turn,
how to open the can and ease their hunger. The physicist suggests they hurl it
upon the rocks to split it open, but this fails. The chemist proposes they soak
it in the sea and let the salt water eat away at the metal; again, no luck.
They turn in desperation to the mathematician, who begins, Assume we have a can opener....

The purpose of the joke was to show that origin-of-life scientists need a cell to get
their story started. Give biologists a cell, and theyll give you the world,
he said. But beyond assuming the first cell must have somehow come into existence,
how do biologists explain its emergence from the prebiotic world four billion years ago?
And thats the subject of our next headline, below.
Next headline on:Evolution 
Dumb Ideas

Dont PNA in our OOL 12/17/2005
Evolutionary theories for the origin of life (OOL) are in a bit of a crisis, unable to
imagine how something as complex as a replicating cell (the necessary unit for Darwinian
natural selection) could come into existence. Richard Robinson, a freelance science
writer, surveyed the scene in PLoS Biology,1 and agreed: The
short answer is that they cant, yet. The word yet hinted
that hope remains: But this question may be a little closer to being answered
as new money enters the field, and two new discoveries provide support for two
competing models of prebiotic evolution.
The two competing models are the genetics first model, that
a replicating molecule bearing genetic information arose first, and the metabolism
first model, that a metabolic cycle emerged that was later co-opted by
information-bearing molecules. Well examine the two new discoveries he spoke
of shortly.
Robinson brought his readers up-to-date on the history of origin of life
studies in a lighthearted manner. He pointed out that funding is a big issue among
researchers in the field. He surveyed the Miller experiment
(05/02/2003) and subsequent milestones
from the 1950s to the present day, quoting Harold Morowitz (George Mason U) that
The initial Miller experiment was earth-shaking, even though Morowitz himself
discounts its relevance today, since in subsequent years researchers realized the initial
conditions were wrong. Robinson discussed the leading RNA World scenario
(11/01/2002,
07/11/2002), but acknowledged that assuming RNA
would emerge is like the assume a can opener joke (see prior commentary).
Some have suggested a simpler polymer, like peptide nucleic acid (PNA), preceded RNA:

The case for PNA is weak, though. While modern cells still bear traces of a catalytic
RNA world within them, there is absolutely nothing that I know of to suggest there is
evidence for PNA or other such molecules in present cells,says [Leslie]
Orgel [Salk Institute]. If they ever contributed to the development of life,
all traces of their existence appear to have been wiped clean. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Apparently there was no PNA in the OOL, in other words. Robinson also discussed the
problem of chirality, that is, how life selected only one hand out of mirror-image molecules
(see online book). Robinson paid particular attention to the hypothesis by Michael Russell
(12/03/2004) and William Martin that life began
as a self-perpetuating chemical cycle in minerals around hydrothermal vents, but acknowledged
again that this model also depends on RNA. Amidst the bad news, Robinson announced
two recent discoveries he thinks provide new hope for the two competing theories.

In the beginning, hydrogen: The Miller experiment is not down for the
count, he encouraged: in June of 2005, the prebiotic soup got a new lease on life.
New calculations appear to show that there was considerably more hydrogen in the early atmosphere
than once thought (06/16/2005).
Orgel thinks this could resurrect Millers chemistry, although there is still
an enormous way to go to get all the precursor molecules for RNA.

Jumpstarting the bootstrap on piggyback: The other discovery, announced by Morowitz in support of the
metabolism first scenario, is that small organic molecules, such as
amino acids, can catalyze the formation of other small organic molecules, such as nucleic acids.
The catalysis of sugars by amino acids was announced in Chemistry this past August, for instance.
Coupled with new ideas about molecular networks (10/05/2005),
Morowitz finds such results dramatic and filled with potential:

What has emerged is a very strong self-organizing principle, says Morowitz.
In this view, while iron sulfide may have been the original catalyst, it did not remain
the only one for long. As products of the original reactions catalyzed new reactions,
metabolic networks quickly arose. Feedback loops developed when two molecules
regulated one anothers synthesis. The system can piggyback its way
upward, he says.

Robinson acknowledged that both scenarios, genetics-first and metabolism-first, have serious
problems; It is still unclear how, or whether, these competing models will fit together,
and whether they will lead to a robust scenario for lifes origin he said.
Indeed, all may eventually prove wrong, and the real solution may lie hidden
in some discovery yet to be made. Such speculations may not be practical,
but the fascination lies in tackling the big questions. Youre going to make
a philosophical impact, Morowitz said. Jack Szostak, another OOL researcher,
added, These are the big questions. Anybody who thinks has to be grabbed by these.
1Richard Robinson, Jump-Starting a Cellular World: Investigating the
Origin of Life, from Soup to Networks,
Public
Library of Science, Biology,
Vol 3, issue 11, Nov 2005, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0030396.

Evolutionary OOL is a faith ministry, funded by charitable contributions
from the federal government. It survives purely on hope  hope that somehow,
somewhere, scientists may find the holy grail of a purely naturalistic origin of life.
Evolutionists often chide creationists for believing in a God of the gaps 
attributing to divine action what science has not yet explained. Yet here we see a
naturalism of the gaps, as philosopher of science J. P. Moreland (Biola) quips.
Putting God in a gap such as the origin of life by attributing it to design, he says, is justifiable
when the gaps have been getting wider for a long time.
The design inference is not a mere God-of-the-gaps retreat, he also argues, because there is
positive evidence for design, not just lack of evidence for a natural explanation.
Evolutionists lack both of these qualifiers for dealing with gaps. They cannot coax
intractable molecules to fill in a gap that molecules do not naturally wish to fill, and
there is no evidence nor requirement that chance and natural law could, would or should fill it.
Robinsons article illustrates how evolutionary hope springs eternal
despite pitiful snippets of evidence to bridge a widening canyon with disconnected
bits of wet tissue paper. This hope is evident also in a 2005 lecture series on the
Origin of Life by Dr. Robert Hazen (George Mason University) published by
The
Teaching Company. Hazen is a good teacher and storyteller; the listener can
learn some organic chemistry and geology, and hear some interesting anecdotes about
personalities in the field. But throughout the 24 lectures, Hazen was frank and honest about
the difficulties, which as yet have no solution. The glue that holds all the bad news together is hope that
a naturalistic explanation for OOL can be found. Never did he consider that
other scientific explanations, like intelligent design, might have a better explanation,
nor did he explain why scientists should be permitted to contradict the evidence of chemistry and physics
indefinitely, just to maintain a philosophical preference for naturalism.
We need to remind such People of Frothy Faith that the science is against
them. RNA is an extremely intractable molecule; it thrives in cells because there
are genes and protein machines that manufacture it according to specifications written
in DNA, and repair it or dispose of it when it breaks. Hazen admitted openly that
no plausible natural environment produces the phosphates, the ribose sugars, the bases,
or can assemble them into nucleotides, even if the building blocks formed somehow. Nor
could the nucleotides plausibly link themselves into an RNA strand. Amino acids
(a requirement for PNA), similarly, do not
naturally link together  they dissolve in water. Furthermore, the
chirality problem is serious. Hazen and Orgel sweep it away with whimsical
speculations, but the probability is against them (see online
book). The metabolism-first scenario (which Hazen and Morowitz favor), must
face the eventuality of needing a genetic, information-carrying molecule. Without
it, there is no hope of a Darwinian mechanism to preserve any gains. If PNA or
TNA (threose nucleic acid, another hypothetical precursor to RNA)
were to arise, there is the difficulty of imagining any plausible genetic takeover
by RNA or DNA (11/05/2005). These are
just a few of the show-stoppers. It only takes one show-stopper to stop a show.
Meanwhile, the gap between top-down and bottom-up
approaches (02/06/2005) is getting wider.
Is there anything that will force evolutionary OOL
researchers out of the naturalistic pool? Robinsons two new
discoveries are pathetically inadequate.
Adding a little more hydrogen to revive the Miller myth is like tossing iron filings into
the Grand Canyon, hoping a bridge will emerge. Describing how some amino acids
might catalyze some sugars is like the self-replicating robot story
(09/30/2005); it was pathetically simple compared
to a real person, and even then, only worked with a lot of
intelligent assistance. This is all too little, too late. The OOL pool of
scientifically verifiable facts belongs to intelligent design. Notice that there is
no PNA in it. Lets keep it that way. We wont swim in their toilet
of speculation if they wont PNA in our pool.
Next headline on:Origin of Life 
Evolutionary Theory

Mireckis got a fight on his hands: The embattled U of Kansas prof
who was going to ridicule intelligent design (ID) in a religion class till his inflammatory
email surfaced (11/29/2005), and who later claimed to
be beaten up off-campus (12/07/2005), continues to get
a pummeling in the news as he tries to defend himself. Though he claims he was pressured to resign,
and threatens to sue over his lack of support by the university (see
Lawrence
Journal-World 12/10),
the Lawrence
Journal-World claimed Dec. 13 that he left voluntarily. The
Journal-World
also reprinted a postcard sent out by the Religious Studies department of the University repudiating
Mireckis inappropriate comments but expressing appreciation for his scholarly work and teaching.
Science Magazine
took note of this in its Random Samples column, but focused on the attack and not the
controversy about it. No arrests have been made of any suspects.
Conservative commentator Michelle
Malkin has been trying for a week to get to the bottom of this.

Georgia Stickers Reviewed: When federal judge Clarence Cooper ordered
evolution-disclaimer stickers removed from Cobb County, Georgia biology textbooks last
January (see 01/13/2005), the school board appealed.
The item has come up for review by a federal appeals panel, according to an Associated Press story on
MSNBC News and
South Carolinas The State.
The three judges are questioning
the accuracy of Coopers decision. To them, the disclaimer seems non-religious
and straightforward. The
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
said the judges gave the lower court ruling a hostile reception, indicating they
might side with the school board in their ruling next year. Rob Crowther for
Evolution
News put the pieces together to claim that the ACLU lied to the federal court while
making its claim that the stickers constituted an endorsement of religion.
Pam Sheppard reported on this story for Answers
in Genesis and also mentioned the lawsuit against the University of California
by Christian Schools accusing the university system of discrimination.

Evolution of Conservatism: Casey Luskin argued in
Human Events that
intelligent design is within the future of the conservative movement. This was
to rebut the claims of Charles Krauthammer and George Will, who had sided with the
Darwinists in their editorials (see 11/19/2005, third bullet).

The Whole Truth: The Darwin exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History
(12/08/2005) is giving a sanitized version of Darwinism, wrote
John West for Evolution
News. The exhibit mentions little or nothing about the social implications of Darwinism,
such as racism and eugenics  including the Darwins own ideas on those subjects,
which West says the museum completely suppresses.

Bible Spin: Top
Tech News reported as an oddity the ministry of Rusty Carter, who has a degree in biblical
studies from Colorado Christian University and earns his living doing floor maintenance.
Carter leads Christian school groups on tours of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science
but gives a Biblically Correct interpretation of the exhibits. The curator
seems not sure what to do about it. See the earlier stories from 10/17/2005,
09/28/2005, and 09/22/2005.

Kansas Rolls Up Its Sleeves: Now that the Kansas school board is permitting
criticisms of Darwinism, school board member Kathy Martin wants curriculum materials for
teachers, reported the
Kansas City Star.

Anti-ID Folks Weigh In: Alan Boyle, in his Cosmic Log on
MSNBC News on Dec. 13, tallied up the
feedback from his list of biggest scientific controversies of the year (12/08/2005).
He was frankly surprised by the overwhelming sentiment against intelligent design
in his unscientific experiment. He reprinted examples, like If the proponents of intelligent
design are successful in foisting their delusions on a new generation of young Americans, they
will likely further undermine future American competitiveness in the biological sciences,
and possibly in other fields of scientific endeavor as well. Boyle surmised that
perhaps it demonstrates that mainstream scientists have made some headway after all,
in spite of the political challenges in Pennsylvania and Kansas.

This Guy Is Falling: Donald Kennedy in
Science 12/16,
in an editorial about science education, warned about terrible consequences if science
educators dont help students think critically about things like intelligent design:

Second, the future of the world is at stake! Thats not melodrama.
Never have exciting new developments in science been more tightly connected to real
dilemmas in public policy. If the electorate distrusts science and doesnt
understand how scientists explore and interrogate the natural world, how will they vote
on issues ranging from stem cell research and global climate change to the
teaching of intelligent design in our schools? In addition to full-time scientists,
we need educated citizens who can think critically about the science and technology
choices so prominent in contemporary political life.

But then, isnt that what the Georgia textbook stickers asked students to do about evolution
 think critically?

Were Dinosaurs Cold-Blooded? 12/16/2005
A paper in Science1 shows that at least one dinosaur species came
in large and small forms. Martin Sander and Nicole Klein studied
fibrolammelar bone on plateosaurs (a heavy two-legged dinosaur with an elephant-like
body and long neck), and found that the growth rates were
poorly correlated with body size. Some plateosaurs were full-grown at five meters,
others at twice as big. It suggests that the creatures were dependent
on environmental factors for warmth. This calls into question the conventional wisdom,
held for 20 years, that dinosaurs were warm-blooded, because most warm-blooded creatures
grow steadily to their adult size (see the
BBC News and
National
Geographic News).
This find also suggests that the earliest dinosaurs were not the two-legged
fast-running kind, but the four-legged, lumbering kind.
Sander calls this a paradigm shift: The idea that it [the earliest dinosaur]
walked on two legs has been pretty much dogma for the last 20 years.
The paper also calls into question some assumptions about dinosaur evolution.
Since the common reptilian ancestor of the dinosaurs, and their closest relatives,
the pterosaurs, or flying reptiles, was believed to have been warm-blooded, the
BBC News article states, the [University of] Bonn discovery could throw ideas about their evolution
into disarray. To salvage the idea of warm-blooded dinosaurs, some are
seriously suggesting warm-bloodedness evolved multiple times: My hunch right now
is that maybe there was repeated evolution of warm-bloodedness, Martin Sander
told BBC News. If so, warm-bloodedness was not inherited from a common ancestor.
Carolyn Gramling, commenting on this paper in the same issue of
Science,2 quoted Thomas Holtz (U of Maryland) remarking about how
little we still know about early dinosaur evolution.
There has been the tendency to infer that features found in all advanced dinosaurs
were found in all of their ancestors, he said. This emphasizes the
importance of tree-based thinking. We have to look at as many branches of the
evolutionary tree to get as big a picture as possible.
1P. Martin Sander and Nicole Klein, Developmental Plasticity in the
Life History of a Prosauropod Dinosaur,
Science
16 December 2005: Vol. 310. no. 5755, pp. 1800 - 1802, DOI: 10.1126/science.1120125.

For more on tree-thinking, see the
11/14/2005 story. Tree thinking is an escape
into the briar patch (11/26/2005) where
Darwinists can hide from scrutiny within the tangled web of varying interpretations.
Warm-bloodedness is not just a trait; it is
a complex suite of traits involving fine-tuning of the circulatory system, the developmental system,
the respiratory system, the nervous system, the skin  basically, of the whole
animal. When evolutionists want to take such an improbable event (in evolutionary
terms) and multiply it several times just to keep their common-ancestry belief intact,
it becomes evidence once again that evolution is a theory in crisis.
Next headline on:Dinosaurs 
Fossils 
Evolutionary Theory

Stem Cell Achievement a Possible Fraud 12/16/2005
South Korean stem cell researcher Woo Suk Hwang has reason for stress and fatigue, as
news reports show him escorted by bodyguards on the way to the office.
His landmark paper in Science1 last July that announced the creation
of stem cells matching the donors DNA
(05/23/2005) has been called into question on two fronts.
On the scientific front, the claims are being questioned by colleagues. On the ethical front,
critics say he covered up the fact that females in his lab were pressured to donate egg cells.Science this week2 reported that his as-yet unreplicated results
inspired a global ramp-up in stem cell efforts last summer. A co-worker accused
Hwang of pressuring a lab worker to forge evidence. Hwang stands by his work
(see BBC), but is
requesting a retraction of the paper. He has resigned from the World Stem Cell Hub.&nbsp
Other sources for this
story: Nature,3MSNBC News,
BBC News,
Town Hall 12/15,
Town Hall 12/16.
The clash of ethics with science continued on other fronts as well.
The Salk Institute embedded human brain cells into mice, reported
Live Science;
(see 03/10/2005).
On the issue of abortion, researchers from University of Oslo in Norway found that mental
distress from an abortion lasts for years (source:
EurekAlert).Update 12/23/2005:
LiveScience reported Dec. 23
that Hwang also resigned from his post as professor at Seoul National University after
allegations he fabricated his research on stem cells became stronger. By the end of the
month, news reporters were declaring his entire study fraudulent.
1Woo Suk Hwang et al., Patient-Specific Embryonic Stem Cells Derived from Human SCNT Blastocysts,
Science,
17 June 2005: Vol. 308. no. 5729, pp. 1777 - 1783, DOI: 10.1126/science.1112286.2Dennis Normile and Gretchen Vogel, News of the Week: Korean University Will Investigate Cloning Paper,
Science,
16 December 2005: Vol. 310. no. 5755, pp. 1748 - 1749, DOI: 10.1126/science.310.5755.1748.3David Cyranoski, TV tests call into question cloners stem-cell success,
Nature
438, 718 (8 December 2005) | doi:10.1038/438718b.

Darwin Descendent Enters Narnia 12/15/2005
Did you know that one of the great-great-great-grandsons of Charles Darwin plays the
part of bad-boy Edmund in the new Chronicles of Narnia movie? After difficulty finding
an appropriate person to play the part, Director Andrew
Adamson saw a picture of Skandar Keynes and said, I think its Edmund
and signed him up. Keynes gave a few snippets about his life to
USA Today.
His father Randal Keynes helped make possible a special screening of
The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe at the
Galapagos Conservation Trust
in London, with profits to go toward conservation of the islands the teen actors
ancestor made famous. Skandar Keynes and other celebrities will attend the showing.

If you have not seen this film, by all means go.
It is outstanding. This anecdote about Keynes is interesting for its symbolic value.
Darwin is an icon of materialism, C. S. Lewis of Biblical Christianity. Of all
the characters in the movie for a Darwin descendent to play, it must strike many as
fitting that he acted the part of the disobedient, selfish-centered, unethical Edmund.
But look how Edmund turned out after experiencing the bitter fruit of his sin, and after
watching the Christ figure, Aslan the noble lion, take the punishment he deserved.
Let this anecdote be a reminder to pray for the redemption of the materialists.
Next headline on:Darwin 
Media 
Bible

Planet Out of Bounds 12/14/2005
Theres a small planetary object where it shouldnt be.
New Scientist reported
the discovery of a Kuiper Belt object (KBO) with a high inclination of 47° and a
nearly circular orbit. Astronomers cant figure out how it got there.
Its too far out to have been flung by Neptune into such a strange orbit.
They have nicknamed it Buffy, the theory slayer.

Theories are fun, till data get in the way.
One planetary science professor years ago was heard to say that astronomers usually get stuck
at some point in their models of solar system formation, and have to invoke some kind of
miracle to continue on and wind up with the real worlds.
Next headline on:Solar System

One-Celled Organisms Spring Generates Enormous Forces 12/13/2005
The pioneering Dutch microscopist Antony van Leeuwenhoek
marveled at the miniature animalcules he witnessed darting through the
water and spinning like a top. One such marvelous protozoan was Vorticella.
The way it rapidly contracted and expanded on its little stalk must have reminded Leeuwenhoek
of a spring. It turns out, it is a spring  a remarkable motorized spring made of
molecules that generates enormous forces, according to a report on
EurekAlert.
In fact, this little spring sets the speed and power record for cellular nanomachines.
Researchers presenting their findings at the annual meeting of the
American Society for Cell Biology likened the spring to
a stretched telephone cord that recoils rapidly  so rapidly, in fact, that size for size,
it outperforms human muscles and car engines. The secret is a bundle of contractile
fibers called the spasmoneme running through the center of the stalk.
The researchers looked under the hood and found a calcium-fueled engine that
uses spasmin, a protein in the centrin family. The exact mechanism of this engine
is poorly understood, but scientists hope that by learning about it they can some day
build nanomolecular machines of exquisite power and efficiency.

For a stark illustration of the unbelievable schizophrenia
of todays biologists, read this story  marveling at the design and complexity
of this little machine, just one of thousands being discovered in the simplest and smallest
of organisms  and then go to the ASCB
Public Policy website where the society encourages its members to sign petitions, write
letters and in every way possible fight the idea of intelligent design.
Next headline on:Cell Biology 
Intelligent Design 
Amazing Stories

Marine Unicorn Tusk is a Precision Sensor 12/13/2005
Unicorns exist  in the north sea. Not horses, these are marine mammals, called narwhals,
a kind of whale that sports a unique spiraling tooth that gives them the appearance of a unicorn.
Scientists have puzzled for centuries over what these tusks are for. Leading theories were
that males used them for joisting to defend territory, or they were artifacts of sexual selection.
Now, scientists from
Harvard School of Dental
Medicine under Martin Nweeia think they have solved the mystery. The tusk is lined
with ten million tiny nerve connections that give this unusual tooth an extremely sensitive probe
into the temperature, salinity and pressure of the icy water in which they live. With the proteinaceous membrane
on the outer surface connected to the nerves inside, it acts as an antenna of sorts, guiding the
animals to their prey in the deep water or sensing the environment at the surface.
The tooth on
males can be up to nine feet long, yet is resistant to breakage.
It grows in a spiral pattern straight out without curving, as with elephant tusks. No other
mammal has a tooth anything like it; the press release states, there is no comparison in
nature and certainly none more unique in tooth form, expression, and functional adaptation.
Tooth scientists are interested in learning how the narwhal tooth remains both strong and flexible (it
can bend a foot without breaking),
for possible applications in restorative dental materials. See also the reports on
LiveScience,
National
Geographic News, and Science
Daily. Narwhals have
also been seeing rubbing one anothers tusks for perhaps some pleasurable or social purpose
humans cannot imagine.

No missing links. Functionally useful.
Optimally designed. The truth about the tooth required discounting evolutionary
stories and going into the Arctic to study these animals and their structures up close,
to determine their design. Chalk up another study that assumed there was a purpose
beyond the just-so stories, and did good scientific work to uncover it. Now we
can all be amazed a little more.
Next headline on:Mammals 
Marine Life 
Amazing Stories

Micro-RNAs are Cells Optimizers 12/12/2005
Unnoticed next to the main ingredients, microRNAs were considered to be junk DNA,
leftovers from millions of years of evolution. That line comes from an article on
EurekAlert
telling about how dramatically that picture has changed. RNA molecules are now seen
to be indispensable, with many roles in the cell. This article talked about how a
certain microRNA has a fail-safe role in development, preventing birth defects.
Researchers at the University of Florida found microRNA that acts as protective mechanisms
in healthy development not just by strategically turning off gene activity, but by making sure
it stays turned off. This is one way a hindlimb is prevented from turning on genes
that are only supposed to be expressed in the forelimb.
Another article on EurekAlert
claimed that RNAs have shaped the evolution of the majority of mammalian genes,
but the connection to macroevolution is obscure. What scientists at the Whitehead
Institute for Biomedical Research found is that most genes have microRNAs that regulate them.
These RNAs dont just switch them on and off; they finely-tune the expression, to help cells
achieve the optimum levels of proteins for the tissues that need them. Many of these
microRNAs are evolutionarily conserved (i.e., unevolved) from animals as
different as humans and chickens. One researcher noted, Our genomes have good
reason to maintain the microRNA targeting sites necessary for turning down these genes
at the appropriate place and time.

We really didnt need any of the references to
evolution. Those evolutionists who are desperately trying to understand the origin
of life have tremendous headaches with RNA. While the RNA World is the
most popular speculation about how life got started, getting from carbon, hydrogen, oxygen,
nitrogen and phosphorus to RNA is a big hurdle (07/11/2002)
No plausible prebiotic soup experiment has been able to produce RNA: not the phosphates, not the
ribose sugars, not the bases. Furthermore, no soup of chemicals puts them together into
nucleotides  the links on the RNA strand. And furthermore, even if the soup got lucky and made a nucleotide,
there is no known natural mechanism for linking them together into RNA polymers, to say
nothing of getting them all one-handed, and in a sequence that could accomplish anything
(except self-destruct with the next UV ray or lightning bolt).
OOL researchers look at RNA and DROOL (Darwinist Rambling about Origin Of Life).
Notice how evolutionary thinking about evolutionary junk hindered real understanding of
what these molecules were there for. Therefore, the field belongs to those who see
optimized, interrelated complexity functioning with high fidelity and reason, that is well-designed.
Next headline on:Cell Biology 
Genetics 
Amazing Stories

Does Big Science Know What Science Is? 12/11/2005
How well do the leaders of the worlds major scientific institutions understand the
nature of science? This rather audacious question is occasioned by recent statements
by scientific leaders that might raise the eyebrows of some philosophers of science.
No serious philosopher of science denies the benefits wrought by medicine, physics, chemistry and biology; after
all, science took us to the moon. But Science is one of those troublesome nouns
that seems to convey too little by standing for too much, said philosopher Daniel J.
Robinson in a lecture on philosophy of science.1 A philosopher with a deep
respect for science, Robinson nonetheless
went on to illustrate widespread disagreement among the worlds foremost philosophers
of science as to just what it is, and how science can be distinguished from non-science.
Though few would see trouble classifying physics and chemistry as sciences, what about
economics, political science, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and what earlier generations
referred to as moral science? Because of its many achievements, the word science
has taken on an aura of honor and authority that can be misconstrued, as with the cults of
Christian Science, Science of Mind, and Scientology. Yet the need for precise definitions and criteria are often
overlooked by practicing scientists. Without clarity, using a broad-brush term like science
can obscure rather than enlighten a discussion.
Much of the controversy over the status of Intelligent Design (ID) revolves
around the definition of science. This came to the forefront in the Kansas school board
decision to change the definition from natural explanations for phenomena
(05/18/2005) to
explanations for natural phenomena (11/08/2005)
To many evolutionists, this was a
sneaky way for creationists to open the door for supernatural explanations in
science. Bruce Alberts, former president of the National Academy of Sciences now at
UC San Francisco, underscored
that point of contention forcefully in a commentary in Cell about science education
that he gave the alarming title, A Wakeup Call for Science Faculty.2

We have recently received a wakeup call. A new survey finds that two-thirds of Americans
agree with some of our political leaders that intelligent design theory should be
taught as an alternative scientific explanation of biological evolution.
What does this mean? According to intelligent design theory, supernatural forces
acting over time have intervened to shape the macromolecules in cells, thereby
forming them into the elegant protein machines that drive a cells biochemistry (Alberts, 1998).
In other words, at least from time to time, living things fail to obey the normal laws of
physics and chemistry. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

The 1998 reference was to his earlier paper in Cell titled, The
cell as a collection of protein machines: preparing the next generation of molecular biologists,
in which Alberts said, the entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an
elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of
large protein machines (01/09/2002). This quote
got him into some trouble because it has been widely quoted by intelligent design proponents.
Clearly, Alberts and other evolutionary biologists do not dispute the existence of biological machinery that
looks designed; the question is whether these natural objects can have natural
explanations. The quotation above also begs the question whether intelligence (the
explanatory agent in intelligent design) necessarily denotes a
supernatural force, or to what extent intervention can be natural, unnatural,
or supernatural.
Natural, too, is one of those words with multiple meanings, depending on the
context. Intellectual historian Alan Charles Kors demonstrated this point by listing
several ways the word nature has been used historically in science and
philosophy.3 Most scientists assume
that nature refers to anything empirically observed: anything not supernatural
is natural, in this view. But nature can also mean a statistical norm: i.e.,
the usual action or behavior of something: for instance, it is natural for parents
to care for their children. Natural in this sense can have moral content and is not
necessarily the opposite of supernaturalism. Finally, his notes state,
we can understand nature as essence (that which distinguishes the creature from all
other things). For example, when humans use their distinguishing faculty called reason to interact
with the world, that behavior can be called natural; failing to use reason would
certainly not be considered supernatural, but rather unnatural.
That raises additional questions. Does reason qualify as a natural phenomenon?
If it is subsumed under the laws of chemistry and physics alone, is it really reason?
Or does the observation of unnatural things fall within the realm
of science? Scientists can quickly fall into traps when trying to define
science and natural too narrowly. They might rule existing scientific studies, like abnormal psychology
(11/13/2005),
out of court, or even deny the validity of their own conclusions. Yet the black-and-white meanings
sufficed for Alberts to rule out intelligent design by definition. Having summarily dispensed with
ID, he appealed to emotional arguments to suggest that only evolutionary biology can cure cancer:

Teaching intelligent design theory in science class would demand nothing less than a complete
change in the definition of science. This definition would give those of us who
are scientists an easy out for the difficult problems we are trying to
solve in our research. For example, why spend a lifetime, constrained by the laws of
physics and chemistry, trying to obtain a deep understanding of how cells accumulate
mutations and become cancerous if one can postulate a supernatural step for part
of the process? Yet we can be certain that, without the deep understanding that
will eventually come from insisting on natural explanations, many powerful cancer
therapies will be missed.

This argument, however, also begs the question whether physical and chemical laws fully explain
biological behavior, such as how cells accumulate mutations and become cancerous.
With computers, by analogy, it is clear that the silicon, plastic, glass and metal are
natural (empirically observable) objects subject to the laws of chemistry and
physics  drop a computer from a height, and it will fall at 32 feet per second per
second and obey the second law of thermodynamics  yet an important part of the
nature of the computer, its essence
as a device to run intelligently-designed software, would be overlooked. Knowing
the physics and chemistry of the hardware would not help debug the software.
In biology, mathematically-precise laws are hard to come by. The Harvard Law
states cynically, Given precise conditions of heat, pressure and temperature,
the organism does what it darn well pleases. Physics and biology are both classed
as sciences, but the latter envies the elegant and deterministic equations of the former.
Even Mendels equations of inheritance and the Hardy-Weinberg Law are statistical in nature,
with many exceptions.
The attempt to formalize evolutionary theory with mathematical rigor is fraught with
problems and anomalies (see 10/26/2005,
10/01/2005, 08/19/2005).
Conversely, modern theoretical physicists delve
into questions not amenable to observation, like string theory and multiverses, and even
write elegant equations about conceptual frameworks that might be dubbed supernatural
(because they lack empirical verification even in principle).
To Alberts, however, more dogmatic assertions and emotional appeals suffice to restate the
obvious, provided the words science and natural are left undefined:

The idea that intelligent design theory could be part of science is preposterous.
It is of course only by insisting on finding natural causes for everything observed
in nature that science has been able to make such striking advances over the
past 500 years. There is absolutely no reason to think that we should
give up this fundamental principle of science now. Two-thirds of
Americans might seem to have no real idea of what science is, nor why it has been
so uniquely successful in unraveling the truth about the natural world.
As I write, the Kansas State Board of Education has just changed the definition of science
in revisions to the Kansas State Science Standards to one that does not include natural
explanations for natural phenomena. What more proof do we need for the
massive failure of our past teaching of biology, physics, chemistry, and earth sciences
at high schools, colleges, and universities throughout the United States?

Sparing Dr. Alberts the additional challenge of defining the words truth and
reason, it seems premature to expect readers of Cell to charge out on his
proposed crusade without knowing where they are going. He called on scientists to
completely redesign our undergraduate introductory science courses, so that all
students come into direct contact with science as inquiry and are forced to develop their
own understanding of what science is, and what it is not. Alberts praised
the approach of teaching science as inquiry, which stresses the finding
answers rather than memorizing rote facts. This will
be the demise of Intelligent Design, he assures: It is through the careful analysis of
why intelligent design is not science that students can perhaps best come to
appreciate the nature of science itself. This seems to do little
more than reinforce definitions: we define science in such a way that intelligent design
is not science, and that explains the nature of science  i.e., the only alternative,
methodological naturalism. The reason why inquiry should be restricted to natural
causes, furthermore, he failed to make clear.
Throughout 2005, other leaders of large scientific institutions, such as Lord May of
the Royal Society (11/30/2005), Alan Leshner of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science (07/11/2005,
02/11/2005), and the editors of
Science and Nature (09/28/2005,
08/13/2005, 08/10/2005,
05/19/2005, 04/27/2005)
have echoed
sentiments similar to those of Bruce Alberts (03/24/2005)
Recognizing that early scientists referred to
themselves as natural philosophers, perhaps this demonstrates the evolutionary
principle of allopatric speciation by geographical isolation between the science and philosophy
departments. Or was that by design?
1Daniel J. Robinson, Philosophy of science, The Great Ideas of
Philosophy, The Teaching Company, 2002.2Bruce Alberts, Commentary: A Wakeup Call to Science Faculty,
Cell,
Vol 123, 739-741, 2 December 2005.3Alan Charles Kors, lecture 18, Bishop Joseph Butler and Gods Providence,
The Birth of the Modern Mind, The Teaching Company, 1998.

It is probably common for scientists to go through
their entire educational career without a single philosophy of science class. Elementary
and junior high schools often teach a Baconian view: just collect lots of facts, make observations,
write a hypothesis, test it, take notes, and produce a science project to attract the attention
of the judges and give Mom and Dad something to brag about.
High school science is similar; science is what the textbook says
and what scientists do. The budding scientist goes right into the university and starts
taking calculus, astrophysics, biology or whatever, gets a degree, narrows his or her studies
in grad school, gets a PhD, gets a job, and goes into a career  all without knowing
what science is.
Your commentator took years of science classes where the definition
of science and nature were just assumed, or else were given simplistic Elizabethan definitions
with no mention of the subsequent revolutions. The work consisted of math and word problems,
homework, tests, experiments, memorization, projects, term papers and the like; rare was
the teacher or professor who ever asked what is science?. This pattern was given
a jolt in a one-semester elective on Philosophy of Science. The professor began
by listing half a dozen well-known scientific facts on the chalkboard and proceeded to tell
the class how all of them were untrue. He also brought up disturbing questions about how
we know what we know, how much the experimental apparatus perturbs the phenomenon
under investigation, whether models accurately reflect reality,
and why new theories have such a hard time getting a hearing.
This professor was also fond of pointing out how few scientists he knew actually thought
about such questions. Scientists, in general, hate philosophers. They dont like someone
telling them what they can or cannot do. Philosophers upset their equilibrium.
They hurt their self-esteem. They react in a huff, It takes a scientist to know what
science is. Yet even feeling that way presupposes a philosophy of science.
To be sure, scientists have an impressive track record like space travel, cures for
infectious disease and the Human Genome Project (11/20/2005)
to argue that what they are doing explains reality and produces useful results.
The problem is that these known successes
are fairly limited to present-day, empirically-observable and repeatable phenomena.
Science Departments are not content to restrict their inquiries to these.
They want control of mind, psychology of morals and religion (Robert Winston,
10/13/2005), art, history,
the origin and destiny of the universe and even of alternate universes. They would push the
Humanities off-campus if they could. Runaway reductionist science needs the
checks and balances provided by philosophers, ethicists, historians and yes, even theologians.
The question what is science?
is not itself a scientific question. It is a question of philosophy about science.
That raises serious questions about whether science can explain itself, as in the evolutionary
literature that routinely expects to derive human rationality ultimately from hydrogen.
These scientists fail to recognize the self-refuting
nature of that line of inquiry. A self-refuting statement is false by definition.
C.S. Lewis (of Narnia fame) once said, A strict materialism refutes itself for the
reason given by Professor Haldane: If my mental processes are determined wholly by
the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true...
and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. 
Metaphysics, therefore, must precede physics; the logical positivists, who wanted to rid
science of metaphysics, were hopelessly stalled. One must have an ontology (philosophy of
being) and epistemology (philosophy of knowing) before one can even do science.
The extreme scientism of the 1930s short-circuited itself when enough philosophers recognized that the proposition
only things empirically verifiable are real was not itself empirically verifiable.
This episode represents one of many revolutions in philosophy of science.
The early Baconian model of science was found to be incomplete; scientists began
emphasizing experimentation and repeatability, but this, too, did not always lead to
new fundamental insights. Scientists realized they needed to be able to make predictions.
That, however, led to some pseudoscientific practices that seemed to succeed at their
predictions, while other legitimate models garnered only probabilistic correlations.
Karl Popper argued for the
falsification criterion. Yet how much falsification is enough, and by whom?
A theory is not often abandoned just because one critic claims to have falsified it,
especially if a rival.
Evolutionary theory itself seems to outlast numerous falsifications, whether from the fossil record,
speciation, Haldanes Dilemma or irreducible complexity. Thomas Kuhn proposed the
controversial view that science had the character of a guild, with members reinforcing one anothers
beliefs until a younger generation could overthrow the reigning paradigm. Carl Hempel tried to
define science according to the logical form of its explanations and the class of events
to be explained, but this leaves out many areas assumed to be legitimate subjects for
scientific inquiry, and permits spurious explanations without valid causal content.
Others argue that an explanation must be evaluated in the context of who asked the question,
or that models only reflect simulations of reality, not reality itself.
Philosophers of science still argue these and many more issues.
In short, as J. P. Moreland (Biola) has argued, there are
no demarcation criteria for science that succeed in excluding all forms of pseudoscience
while simultaneously including all disciplines recognized as valid by scientists. The field permits
contests at all levels among advocates of this or that subject, either wanting to gain the respectability of
science, or wanting to exclude others from that respectability. Moreland argued that
the primary success of the Darwinian revolution was to redefine science to exclude theology
out of hand, and thus claim that all prior scientists who had been doing their work
based on belief in a Creator were doing religion and not science, by definition.
This explains much about the efforts by Big Science to exclude intelligent design.
Its no longer necessary to play a fair game when you have disqualified your opponent.
Big Science, for example, gives approval to the methods of design inference in cryptography,
forensics, archaeology and SETI (12/03/2005), but wants to exclude them
by fiat from biology. The great obstacle to the progress of our understanding is
always complacency, said Robinson. A fundamentalist scientism risks
developing a hostility  at least an indifference  toward criticism, and thus it
risks depriving itself of its own traditional sources of inspiration.
It is also unwise to ignore the role of personality in scientific disputes. Science is,
after all, a human invention, performed by fallible humans. Bruce Alberts was not acting
as Dr. Cool, Objective Scientist in his wakeup call. He displayed the same
human emotions and biases to which we are all prone. Due to our finiteness,
human science must always remain incomplete and tentative, its explanations judged for their utility
rather than their ability to answer ultimate questions.
Surely sciences exist and pseudosciences exist. We do, after all,
fly space ships and treat disease. Science must be doing something right;
at some levels, it must have attained a reliable correspondence with the real world.
At the other extreme, nobody wants pyramidology or astrology labs competing in the university science department.
Yet the boundaries are not as sharp as Alberts draws them, or else he would have to admit that
much of evolutionary theory and cosmology fail the definition. Whether supernaturalism
or interventionism are fair characterizations, or are illegitimate subjects for
scientists to consider, become moot on closer inspection. The history of
science is filled with religiously devout people who believed that understanding nature
was understanding the mind of God. Newton himself was delighted that his theories helped
to refute atheism. Both lecturers for The Teaching Companys series on the
history of science have stated without hesitation that the picture of a warfare of
religion vs science is a myth. They both illustrated with many examples how
belief in God and his creative design were instrumental in gaining new insights into the
workings of nature. A new book
by Rodney Stark makes that case as well (see The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led
to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success on
Amazon.com
and Human Events).
Stark shows how the Christian commitment to rational theology were absolutely essential
in the rise of science. It can safely be assumed that each of these Christian
practitioners of science believed in the essence of intelligent design.
This makes it hard to take seriously Alberts wakeup call that the sky is falling
if intelligent design gets [back] into biology (consider Linnaeus
for one example).
We shortchange students by shielding them from these questions and giving them a spoon-fed, black-and-white
picture of science vs. religion, natural vs. supernatural, and other shallow concepts based on
false dichotomies.
The history of science is one of vibrant debates and controversies.
Philosophy of science has undergone many revolutions, and is still embroiled in
debates between realists and anti-realists, rationalists and materialists, and
scholars who actively dispute what is scientific and what is not. Alberts,
even though he has been a leader in calling biologists to recognize the machine-like
nature of living cells, is characterizing the debate over intelligent design emotionally
and dogmatically, begging these questions in a way that shields Darwinists from
critical scrutiny and competition. Is it not the Darwinians who teach that
competition and struggle has produced all the complexity and beauty of life?
It is only by teaching the controversy
that students will escape a shallow conception of this human enterprise called science that has amassed so
much moral authority in our modern world. Anything less is serfdom to the
oligarchy Phillip Johnson has called the Mandarins of Science. Anything less is bound to turn
Big Sciences dogmatic views on origins into an unaccountable, self-perpetuating paradigm.
Daniel Robinson ended his lecture on philosophy of science by taking off on a rocket:

Getting to the moon and back is largely the work of rockets, once the basic laws and the
necessary engineering have been worked out. And so the question that survives, even in
the wake of such a momentous achievement, is whether those laws, and that engineering, are
drawn from a culture, so to speak, that is to have pride of place in assessing all of reality.
The word itself reality presupposes a percipient. Its not a sophist
trick to ask, Whose reality? or, Reality in relation to what?
The aim throughout is to understand the setting of our own lives, at once physical, social,
political, and moral. And it remains to be debated whether ultimate authority in
these respects is held by science.

Instant Geology and Undersea Activity 12/09/2005
Were accustomed to thinking of geological processes as slow and gradual, except for
volcanoes, earthquakes and landslides, but some recent stories are surprising for the speed
and extent of active processes.

Run: The Earth Is Splitting Apart: Geologists were amazed to find a rift
in the Afar desert east of Ethiopia opening up 8 meters wide and 60 kilometers long in just
three weeks, reported BBC News.
They call this a rapid episode in the slow formation of a new ocean basin, a process that
normally takes millions of years. This rapid change was called unprecedented in scientific history.

Springs of the Sea: Hydrothermal vents are popping up everywhere, wherever
scientists look. USA
Today said they ocean floor is covered with them;
MSNBC News said they are not just
along tectonic plate boundaries like the pacific Ring of Fire, as previously assumed.

Wow, at 8 meters every 3 weeks, that ocean basin would be
82,000 miles wide in a million years, bigger than the whole earth! Just kidding,
of course. Nobody is saying that is a typical or uniform rate. It does
illustrate, however, that big things can happen in a short time if the conditions are
right. Faster rates than that could be envisioned, and must have been the case
for certain large-scale, catastrophically-formed regions.
Its time to relegate Lyell to the history books where he belongs.
His uniformitarian gradualism was useful to Darwin in the Victorian age. Darwin became obsessed
with the vision of how large changes could occur by the accumulation of small variations
over long eons of time. That vision has seen too many challenges to be assumed in
our day.
By the way, how did the ancient philosopher Job know about hydrothermal
vents? Have you entered the springs of the sea? Or have you walked in
search of the depths?
(Job 38:16).
He must have been told by someone who knew. Theres another source of data
too often overlooked by moderns: direct testimony from the Architect.
Next headline on:Geology 
Dating Methods 
Bible and Theology

Darwin Display Becomes Rallying Point 12/08/2005
The Charles Darwin exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History
(11/21/2005, 11/17/2005,
10/17/2005) has become a safe haven and symbol of dominance
for Darwinists otherwise flustered by the controversy over evolution. This most in-depth exhibition
of Darwins life and thought will make the rounds to Boston, Chicago, Toronto and
London in coming seasons. Alan Packer reviewed the
exhibit for Nature1 and found it splendid. He
opined, In explaining what we know about
the theory of evolution and its originator, given the limitations of what an exhibition
can convey, Darwin could hardly be bettered. He also thought it was well-timed
because of the controversy in Dover, Pennsylvania over intelligent design. Darwin,
according to Packer, removed the nebulous idea of belief from the discussion.
A panel of academics met last week at the museum to discuss the controversy
between Darwinism and intelligent design, Reuters reported (see
MSNBC News). Their panel discussion,
entitled Darwins Legacy, considered ID as a cultural battle, a global
phenomenon or even a brilliant marketing scheme but not a serious scientific theory.
Michael Ruse puzzled over why America is so religious yet also a scientific powerhouse.
He attributed the religious nature to historical reaction of the South to the Civil War.
They turned toward the Bible and away from everything they thought represented the North, he asserted,
while evolution was taken to represent everything about the North that they disliked.
Ronald Numbers expressed concern that ID is not just an American phenomenon,
but is growing rapidly in Asian countries, Russia, China, and Islamic states. He chocked
ID up to a successful P.R. campaign.

Finally Edward Larson, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1998 book on the Scopes monkey
trials, held that the debate boiled down in the United States to what is being taught
in high-school biology classes.
In the only remark to draw applause from the large audience, Larson said
the problem is partisan officials trying to tell science teachers how to do their jobs,
and for blatantly religious motivations. He also noted that so far,
the issue hasnt affected scientific funding.
(Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Some evolutionists, like E. O. Wilson, have claimed that only anti-evolutionists refer to
it as Darwinism, but Casey Luskin at
Evolution News
found many hits on the word in science journals. Darwin still remains a hero to many
evolutionary biologists. In a recent issue of Current Biology,2 for instance,
John Raven (U of Dundee) was asked, Do you have a scientific hero? Only a short
answer was considered necessary: Charles Darwin. I hope I do not need to say more.
Yet Darwin continues to elicit controversy 146 years after the publication of
his influential book. Alan Boyle on MSNBC
rated Darwin vs. Design as #1 of the top five science-related social controversies.
Robert Crowther on
Evolution News
said that academic persecution of scientists investigating intelligent design is a dangerous and
growing trend. Despite the risk, more schools are poised to look at ID favorably and Darwin
with a critical eye. After the debacle
of the ID-mocking class at U. of Kansas (see next entry), Knox College in western Illinois
will be offering a more balanced philosophy class on ID, reported the
Daily Review Atlas,
and depending on how the Dover trial goes, school boards may be lining up to give ID more
exposure in science classes. Lisa Anderson wrote for the
Chicago
Tribune that no matter which way Judge Jones rules, the controversy will not be quieting down.
And if the judge rules that ID is constitutional, were going to have school boards
across the country trying it (introducing ID) the next day, she quoted one analyst.
Andersons title summarized what might happen: Dover ruling could be its own genesis.
1Alan Packer, Exhibition: A close look at Darwin,
Nature
438, 741 (8 December 2005) | doi:10.1038/438741b.2John Raven, Q&A,
Current Biology,
Volume 15, Issue 22, 22 November 2005, Pages R905-R906.

Despite their attempts to get the focus off Darwin and onto the word
evolution, and claim scientific legitimacy for the bits and pieces of evidence of
microevolution here and there that they can extrapolate to support the idea that
humans descended from bacteria through numerous, successive, slight modifications
over millions of years, the antics of the Darwin Party really boil down to Charlie
worship. John Raven is not the first evolutionist interviewed in a magazine that
immediately pointed to Charlie as a scientific hero. They really, really love
the guy, because he is the patron saint of storytellers. His Moses-like face,
shining with the glory of naturalism,
led them to the promised land of endless scientific funding for lazy speculations
(12/22/2003).
Notice how Larson (a man who personally helped overturn the Inherit the Wind
stereotype about the Scopes Trial) worried about how the controversy has not yet affected funding.
The Darwin Party has reason to worry. A lot of useless speculative projects that get nowhere
and produce nothing but vaporware on back order will be scrutinized carefully if the
presumed authority of Pope Charlie falls into disrepute (ex., 11/05/2005).
Charlie had a moderately interesting life, piddling around his garden,
getting people to make funny faces on camera (11/22/2005)
and other things, but he only had a degree in theology, no PhD, and lived off his wifes
familys fortune. Sickly and private, prone to self-centeredness,
he was not that admirable a person.
Maybe its because his ethical reputation is the best of the worst among his tribe
(see 09/02/2004) that museums like to have exhibits on
him instead of Haldane, Fisher, Wright, J. M. Smith, William Hamilton and the later
lineup of reckless communist zealots and prima donnas that have held up the standard of
evolutionary theory. At least Charlie as an old man, like Santa, looked cuddly and innocent
(but see 11/30/2005 entry).
Next headline on:Darwin and Evolutionary Theory 
Intelligent Design 
Education

Who Beat Up Paul Mirecki? 12/07/2005
A dark sequel has been added to the story of the Univ. of Kansas prof who was going to
teach a class ridiculing intelligent design, then canceled it when a defamatory email he wrote
surfaced (see 11/29/2005 story). Now, he
claims he was accosted while driving off campus early Monday morning and beaten up
by two guys in a pickup truck who had been tailgating him, according to a report in the
Lawrence Journal-World 12/06.
The details appear sketchy, making some doubtful of the story, but his injuries were
not in doubt; he was treated at the Lawrence Memorial Hospital for bruises and sore spots
which he said were caused by the men punching him and hitting him with a metal object.
According to Mirecki, the attackers made references to the controversy
as their reason for the attack. The suspects have not been identified, and
Mirecki himself has kept mum about the details (see
Lawrence
Journal-World 12/07.
Subsequently, on Wednesday, Mirecki decided to step down as chairman of the
Religious Studies department, reported the Wichita
Eagle. This article also mentioned the attack, but did not say if it had anything
with his decision to step down. It said he acted on the recommendation of his
colleagues in the department.

Lets make one thing crystal clear up front:
whoever attacked Dr. Mirecki should be punished. If you know who did this,
turn them in. If you did this and are reading this, turn yourself in.
(A doubtful possibility; our feedback shows our readership to be a virtuous and intelligent lot.)
Assault is a heinous crime. In a controversy like evolution vs. ID, it is also
extremely counter-productive. How can someone hope for open discussion by shutting
it off and resorting to violence? If this really happened the way Dr. Mirecki described it, it is
completely out of bounds, and the perpetrators should be punished. Respect and reason
are the only tools of effective engagement in intellectual controversies.
Still, the details seem sketchy and somewhat incoherent. There was
a case of a professor in California last year who staged an incident of vandalism
to her car in order to appear a victim of a hate crime. Lets give Mirecki
the benefit of the doubt. We wont even print the links of bloggers who think
Mirecki made it all up. Treat this as a story in progress and hope the whole
truth comes to light. Dr. Mirecki could help the situation by giving a full report.
In the meantime, we wish him well as a fellow human being, thank him for his apology, and
respect his decision to step down.Next headline on:Education 
Politics and EthicsOur commentary in the 11/29 story
only used the word evil because Mirecki applied it to himself.
Our assumption was that readers understood drive the vermin out in a figurative sense,
implying that administrators need to do housecleaning on campus and not tolerate hate speech
like that in Dr. Mireckis email, speech that the state legislators regarded as vile and
repugnant. (In fact, his email could have been viewed as a provocation to violence
against creationists: nice slap in their big fat face etc.) As the last
sentence made clear, the commentary was meant to foster open, free discussion of ideas
among informed, ethical, rational people.

Genome Complexity No Measure of Evolution 11/07/2005
Do genes show an increasing pattern of complexity from lower to higher organisms?
Not necessarily, reported Elizabeth Pennisi in Science Now.
Cnidarians, including sea anemones and corals, for example, show almost as much complexity
in their genomes as humans, whereas fruit flies and worms, seemingly more complex than
cnidarians (06/25/2005, 2nd par.)
appear to have lost some of the complex gene families found in corals.
A molecular biology team in Norway found that cnidarians have a more complex genome than
previously thought.

...cnidarians such as coral and sea anemones have similar genetic underpinnings to vertebrates,
be they fish or people. Cnidarians share extended gene families with vertebrates that
fruit flies and nematodes lack, suggesting that insects and worms lost many members of those
families. Indeed, the data hint that cnidarians have more genes than either fruit flies or nematodes.

Pennisi ends with a quote by John Finnerty, an evolutionary biologist at Boston University.
There is no simple relationship between the numbers of genes an animal possess and
its complexity at the morphological level, he said.

OK, then, Darwinism has been falsified. Again.
(See 11/25/2004,
12/30/2004). The complexity was there near
the beginning and has not increased over hundreds of millions of years.
There is no linear progression from simple to complex. This is not what
evolutionary theory predicted. It chops down the evolutionary tree of life.
Good; now we can build an intelligently-designed log cabin with it and come in out of the
cold.Next headline on:Genetics 
Marine Life 
Evolutionary Theory

New Mammal Discovered in Borneo 12/06/2005
Caught on camera: a cat-sized quadruped with a long, bushy tail. See the picture
on National
Geographic News. Found in Borneos rain forests, it is so new we dont
know what to call it yet. The article says this is the first new mammal species
discovered on the Southeast Asian island in more than a century. See also the
Reuters story on MSNBC.

It looks like a cat with a fox face. How did such
a creature escaped detection for so long? There are still plenty of mysteries on
this vast planet. The natives probably knew all about it, though.Next headline on:Mammals

Wine for Your Heart? Think Again 12/06/2005
Any heart gains from drinking alcohol in moderation are likely outweighed by the harm, say researchers.
Thats how a story on BBC
News begins that warns that alleged benefits of alcohol for heart health may not
be trustworthy. A New Zealand team investigated earlier scientific studies that
purported to show benefits of drinking in moderation, and found that
the way the studies were carried out did not allow the researchers to be able to
say with certainty that the findings could not due to other factors rather than solely
the amount of alcohol consumed. This did not mean that health benefits have
been falsified  only unconfirmed. Meanwhile, the known harms of alcohol
may outweigh any benefits. If so, the public health message is clear,
the article warns. Do not assume there is a window in which the health
benefits of alcohol are greater than the harms  there is probably no free lunch.
One theory keeps getting more and better confirmation, though: exercise is good for the heart.
See the latest example on EurekAlert.

The science is inconclusive that there are any coronary
benefits to alcohol consumption, but the harms are well known. It may just be that
alcoholics tend to have clean arteries. There are two
lessons in articles like this: (1) much of what we think we know is wrong, and (2)
scientific findings are tentative. The assumption that wine is healthy has been going around since
the 1960s and 1970s. How many people have been led to believe that they should
drink wine more often for good health? How many following that line got drawn
into alcoholism, or swamped any gains with greater harms? This is not to take a
hard-line position on who is right, but just to remind everyone that some claims by scientists
may be based on flawed studies.
If you choose to drink during the holidays,
dont claim you do it for health reasons. The last sentence in the article
makes the best sense: Our advice remains the same  the best way to reduce
the risk of heart disease is to quit smoking if you smoke, increase levels of physical
activity and eat a healthy balanced diet.
A reader pointed out that it is not the alcohol, but the antioxidants,
that confer upon wine its healthy benefits. But consumers can find equal or better
antioxidants in pomegranates, dark chocolate and many other non-alcoholic foods and
drinks. It would seem most drinkers primarily want the taste of the alcohol,
or else there would be a large market for non-alcoholic wine among health-conscious consumers
who want the antioxidants without the harm of ethyl alcohol. Wine consumption
still cannot be rationalized, therefore, on claims it is good for the heart.Next headline on:Health

It Was the Year of Titan 12/05/2005
Of the top 10 astronomy stories for 2005, Astronomy
Magazine gave #6 to Cassinis year at Saturn,
and #1 to the Huygens landing
on Titan last January 14 (01/14/2005,
01/21/2005).
The official science papers from that event are now in. In a special online edition,
Nature1
published 9 new papers and articles with the latest results and
interpretations of what Huygens found on its 2.5-hour descent and historic landing on
the surface, where it survived at least another 3 hours taking pictures and measurements.
Most of the Nature online articles, including video and audio files with links to
other resources, have free access.
Titan, the second-largest moon of all (bigger than the planet Mercury), called the largest piece
of unknown real estate in the solar system took on a vaguely familiar face as Huygens
revealed river channels dissecting hills and emptying out into lakebeds littered with
boulders  but with a bizarre difference 
methane instead of water, ice grains instead of sand, and ice blocks instead of rocks (see
EurekAlert
story). The Cassini orbiter, working
in tandem, also took multiple radar scans and focused all its precision instruments on Titan
in nine encounters so far, with at least 36 more to go (05/18/2005).
EurekAlert
summarized announcements at the American Geophysical Union meeting about the jets on
Enceladus (11/28/2005), which joins Titan as a
dynamic, eruptive body. To complete the collection, a gallery of Cassini 2005 images of
Saturns moons was released by the
Imaging Team.
A series of new mosaics of the Titan landing site,
composed of frames taken by the descent imager on Huygens, was released on both
the JPL and ESA websites. Huygens was also the lead story on the Science Channel weekend
program Discoveries This Week and will be the subject of a special program December 13-14,
Rendezvous
with Saturns Moon.
NASA and ESA scientists are already working on a follow-up mission: this time, perhaps to
float a blimp in the atmosphere to cover more territory and survive longer. Actual
arrival, after planning, building, launching and cruising, will probably take at least
17 years, if funds can be raised.
1Web focus, Huygens on Titan,
Nature online feature.
See also the print edition starting with a News Focus by Tobias Owen,
Huygens rediscovers Titan,
Nature
438, 756-757 (8 December 2005) | doi:10.1038/438756a.

After months of waiting, the scientists have spoken.
There is way too much material to cover here. Titan has to be one of the most
intriguing worlds in the solar system beyond earth. The lack of impact craters
and strong suggestions of surface activity
(06/09/2005,
04/08/2005) give indications this world is young.
The atmospheric methane blanket is eroding quickly
(03/11/2005). The scientists still have no
idea how the atmosphere could last more than a tiny fraction of the assumed age of the solar system
(about one forty-fifth), and why no oceans of liquid ethane were found on the surface.
Titan invites intense follow-up investigation by scientists and serious amateurs.
The pictures, meanwhile, are sure to stimulate the wonder and imagination of everyone.
Next headline on:Solar System 
Amazing Stories

How You Tune In 12/05/2005
Studies on rats have shown there are certain neurons that respond to changes in the
background sound (see LiveScience story on
MSNBC News).
We humans probably have these, too. Rather than firing continuously, they
search for changes in the auditory landscape that might be of interest: changes in
pitch, loudness or duration in single sounds or patterns of sounds.
The work was done by Ellen Covey and a team at the University of Washington and
published in the European Journal of Neuroscience.
The novelty detector neurons seem to act as gatekeepers, Covey and her colleagues conclude,
preventing information about unimportant sounds from reaching the brains cortex,
where higher processing occurs. This is how we can ignore unimportant
information, even though it may be loud. It also may play a part in our sense
of humor: Whatever we have just heard allows us to anticipate what will come
next, and violations of our predictions are often surprising or humorous.

One of the great mysteries of neuropsychology and
of philosophy is the mind-body problem. We continue to learn about the intricate
machinery, the physical and chemical properties of our neurons, but how do these
mechanical activities translate into our sensations of the external world?
How does a chain of processes leading to the brain connect us to what is really
out there? How can we be sure that the end of the chain, what is actually
closest to us, corresponds to the source of the signal in the external world?
How can our minds choose to focus in on certain sensations around us?
Even the act of raising an arm is a complete mystery. You can command your
arm Up! and make it go up, or you can even make it disobey your command
or stay still. Such simple things are really baffling when you think about
them. It is clear that a fantastic array of biological instrumentation is
involved, but it also appears hopelessly inadequate to reduce our mental operations to the
motions of molecules. Stories like this can be cause for thoughtful reflection.
Next headline on:Human Body 
Mammals 
Amazing Stories

SETI vs. Intelligent Design 12/03/2005
Intelligent Design proponents have often pointed to the similarity between what they
are doing and what SETI is doing. For example, SETI is attempting to detect evidence of
intelligence in coded signals from space, and design biologists are detecting evidence of
intelligence in the DNA code. Seth Shostak, Director of the SETI Institute,
decided to challenge that comparison in the weekly SETI report on
Space.com.
He started with a comparison of his own: ID people are no more to be taken seriously than the comedian who found
a potato that looked like Richard Nixons head. But then he got serious; isnt there a double
standard, if SETI is accepted by the scientific community and ID is not?
First, Shostak argued that the signals SETI is searching for are not all
that complex. A code or message is not a requirement; a valid candidate might just be
a persistent narrowband whistle of
no known natural origin. Still, why would SETI be able to deduce intelligence with
far less complexity than the high complexity found in DNA? Here, Shostak made a
surprising statement: such a simple, narrow signal from space would constitute better evidence
for intelligence than the DNA code:

Well, its because the credibility of the evidence is not predicated on its complexity.
If SETI were to announce that were not alone because it had detected a signal, it would be on the basis
of artificiality. An endless, sinusoidal signal  a dead simple tone  is not complex;
its artificial. Such a tone just doesnt seem to be generated by natural astrophysical
processes. In addition, and unlike other radio emissions produced by the cosmos, such a signal is
devoid of the appendages and inefficiencies nature always seems to add  for example, DNAs
junk and redundancy. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

He admitted that the pulsar first thought to be evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence in 1967
did not convey information, but then says that it was profligate in its signal, broadcasting
all over the spectrum. This, he claims, shows that it was a signal no alien would
produce; it would be too wasteful. In cells and
sea lions, on the other hand, nature produces things full of Junk, redundancy and inefficiency
he claimed. To him, this proves they were not artificially engineered because they are
not optimally built.
A second error in the comparison, Shostak continued, is in overlooking the importance of context.
SETI researchers would be justified in inferring artificiality if they found a large green square on
an earth-like planet (instead of in a group of stars), just like archaeologists are justified in inferring
hominid tool-making if rock chips are found in a cave.
In summary, Shostak disavows the comparison between SETI and ID research on two
counts: (1) SETI is not looking for messages with evidence of intelligence, but only for simple
artificial signals; (2) SETI is looking for artificiality in the context of places where such
very modest complexity would be unexpected and not otherwise observed.
The last word: This is clearly nothing like looking at DNAs chemical makeup and
deducing the work of a supernatural biochemist.

We have to hand it to Seth Shostak for tackling an argument
head-on without too much mocking. Will his arguments stand up to scrutiny? You
decide. In the first place, looking for a simple signal is just the first pass filter.
All the SETI literature has been replete with claims that eventually humans want to converse
with the aliens and learn from them. Jimmy Carter spoke for the earth in writing, We hope
some day, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations.
Thats also why our messages to them have
been very complex: from the Arecibo message, to the Pioneer plaque, and especially to the Voyager
records  loaded with information, telling them as much about ourselves as the bandwidth
allowed. Finding a persistent narrowband whistle would most certainly instigate
an intensive follow-up search to first confirm the artificiality of the signal, and then try
to discover more complexity in it. Shostak and the world would certainly not be sufficiently
convinced to get off at the whistle-stop and say, well, we found intelligent life, so lets move
on to something else. Look at how the alleged canals on Mars sent scientists and
the public into a frenzy to get more data and learn more about a possible Martian civilization.
The confirmation of extraterrestrial intelligence would surely demand more complexity in
the signal, just as it did in the SETI-dominated movie Contact.
As to Shostaks second argument that an artificial signal would be efficient
whereas life is profligate and wasteful, who is he kidding? This is a red
herring wrapped in circular reasoning. Like most of the
SETI crowd, Shostak is an evolutionist. He assumes life evolved, and he assumes evolution
is a wasteful process without design,
so when he finds what (to him) looks like wastefulness and redundancy, he only argues his
assumptions. This is the old dysteleology (bad design) argument, but it is rather presumptuous to
tell the Designer if you were really so smart, you would have done it my way.
In the first place, Shostak obviously has not been listening to the molecular biologists who are in such awe of
the efficiency and robustness of biological machinery that they are racing to imitate it
(11/19/2005). (Artists may try to imitate junk, but not engineers.)
In the second place, the junk DNA he speaks of is rapidly being redefined as more about its
essential functions is being uncovered
(10/20/2005,
09/08/2005,
07/15/2005). In the third place, he presumes he knows what the
aliens would do, when maybe, to them, sending a wideband message might make more sense than a
narrowband one. In the fourth place, he assumes human intelligence is not profligate,
redundant and wasteful. Ever seen government regulations? So not only is he presumptuous and
uninformed over the particular claims of this argument, it is an irrelevant argument anyway:
SETI would certainly follow up any sign of artificiality with a massive search for
more complexity containing a message. He argued that the ID claim that complexity would imply intelligence,
is also wrong. But this misrepresents the claims of ID (see next paragraph), and will
come back to bite his own assertion in the end.
Shostak also misleads his readers by making a false distinction between
artificiality and complexity. This equivocation
also begs the question about design vs. evolution.
The ID literature has made it clear that it is not just complexity that makes a
design inference valid, but specified complexity. If an artificial
signal were found with enough complexity beyond what could be produced naturally,
it would be specified by definition, even if it were a persistent lowband whistle. After ruling out
chance and natural law as sources, both Shostak and the ID community would conclude
that an intelligent design inference is warranted. So the distinction disappears.
Both sides also agree that specified complexity depends on context; a little complexity,
like a cairn on a trail, is sufficient to make a design inference in the mountains,
whereas much more specified complexity would be required to declare a forger guilty.
And what is artificial anyway, if not designed by an intelligence? Shostak is
not being consistent here, because to him, artificiality evolved: it has its roots in
non-design. How could artificiality (i.e., purposeful action of a designer)
evolve in the first place? At what point did purpose and intent (i.e., free will) diverge from
chance and necessity? A beaver is intelligent, but is hauling a piece of wood for
the purpose of making a dam equivalent to sending an intelligent signal bearing information?
Is the guard crow sending intelligent communication when it caws the warning signal to the flock?
Suppose an alien planet had frogs that croaked with a persistent narrowband whistle
in the radio range;
would SETI be ready to ask them about the meaning of life and how to survive global war?
Clearly a different category of communication is being sought here.
SETI goes beyond astrobiology. It would not be content to find bacteria on Mars;
it wants evidence of purpose, intent, intelligence and free will  beings capable of
harnessing nature to send information-bearing messages that would never occur by chance or
natural law. Humans do this all the time: smoke signals, skywriting,
petroglyphs, writing with a stick in the sand, or beaming bits into space.
How can Shostak make a design inference based on artificiality (extraterrestrial intelligence,
the kind that intends to communicate with us)
without first assuming the very criterion he wants to deny to
advocates of intelligent design? And without coming up with some sort of criterion
for minimum specified complexity, how can he distance himself from the comedian
who finds a potato that looks like Richard Nixons head?
Finally, lets have a little fun at Seth Shostaks expense, with all due
respect. One of the persistent harangues against intelligent design is that it brings
science to a halt by claiming a designer did it. According to this view, ID scientists
are lazy and prone to jumping to conclusions. They dont want to be diligent in performing
the rigorous work necessary to find natural explanations for complex phenomena (see
11/21/2005 end of main article). This is not true, because
using the Dembski Explanatory Filter, intelligent causes are always a last resort after
natural and chance causes are eliminated. But lets put the
shoe on the other foot for a change. Dr. Shostak, Jill Tarter et al.,wouldnt it be the lazy way out for
a SETI scientist to infer intelligence for a persistent narrowband whistle? Surely a naturalistic
explanation must be out there. You must keep trying, ad infinitum, till a natural cause
is found. If you infer intelligence was the cause, you are just giving up. You are failing to perform the
rigorous analysis necessary to do science; you are bringing science to a halt.
Nice try, Dr. Shostak. Think about this some more and try again.
And while youre at it, tell us how your own intelligent message-sending capacity evolved,
or how it can be distinguished from chance and natural law, if nature is all there is.
Next headline on:SETI 
Intelligent Design 
Cosmology

Archaeopteryx in the Headlines Again: New Specimen Reported 12/02/2005
The best-preserved fossil yet of Archaeopteryx was announced in Science this
week,1 the tenth in all. This one, described by Gerald Mayr of the
Senckenberg Natural History Museum (Frankfurt, Germany), had a better-preserved foot than the
others (all found in the Solnhofen Limestone beds of Bavaria) with indications it had
a hyperextendable second toe somewhat similar to those on deinonychosaurs.
Not being reversible, as on modern birds, this toe led the
discoverers to conclude Archaeopteryx was not a perching bird.
National
Geographic News is convinced this fact plus the theropod-shaped skull settles the dispute about
the relationship of birds to theropod dinosaurs.
Erik Stokstad, however, in a News Focus article in the same issue of
Science,2 denied that there was anything radically new about this
specimen. Theres another problem: Burkhard Pohl, an amateur collector and
founder of the for-profit Wyoming Dinosaur Center where it will be housed (also co-author
of the announcement in Science) is not forthcoming on this fossils pedigree:

The origins of the Archaeopteryx, however, remain hazy. Pohl says he
found a donor to buy it from a private collector after the Senckenberg
failed to raise enough money. (Mayr declines to reveal the asking price,
but the Paläontologische Museum München paid DM 2 million--about $1.3 million--for
a less spectacular specimen in 1999.) The Archaeopteryx appears to be legal,
because Bavaria allows the export of fossils. Pohl wont say who legally owns it,
but he says that its guaranteed that it will stay in a public collection.
(Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Pohl has connections with the world of commercial fossil dealing, and some scientists
remain uncomfortable working with him, according to Stokstad.
They want to be absolutely certain that fossils, particularly foreign ones, were
legally excavated. They also want such important fossils to be housed in
accredited public collections. Stokstad did not question the authenticity of this
fossil specifically, and included some details supporting Pohls
credibility and good intentions, but that he did raise these concerns by scientists in the
same issue as the announcement of the discovery seemed unusual.Science News
(Week of Dec. 3, 2005; Vol. 168, No. 23, p. 355)
offered additional information. It said that the interpretation of the foot is not
conclusive. Some scientists, including Larry Martin (U of Kansas) and Alan Feduccia
(U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) are not convinced that the discoverers proved their
case that the bird was unsuited for perching in trees. To them, the claws look curved
for perching and the toe looks reversible for clinging, just like on the other specimens.
1Gerald Mahr, Burkhard Pohl and D. Stefan Peters,
A Well-Preserved Archaeopteryx Specimen with Theropod Features,
Science,
2 December 2005: Vol. 310. no. 5753, pp. 1483 - 1486, DOI: 10.1126/science.1120331.2Erik Stokstad, Best Archaeopteryx Fossil So Far Ruffles a Few Feathers,
Science,
2 December 2005: Vol. 310. no. 5753, pp. 1418 - 1419, DOI: 10.1126/science.310.5753.1418.

Once again, a cloud of doubt is raised around this icon
of evolutionary transitional forms. Fred Hoyle wrote a whole book
about possible fraud surrounding the most famous feathered Archaeopteryx fossils
(not all have feather impressions), and others have done the same over the years.
Now we have another, the
best-looking of all, and we cant be absolutely sure where it came from.
Why cant the best paleontologists go over to Bavaria and uncover a
clear example of a feathered specimen in situ to end all doubt?
Although Hoyles hoax theory is not widely accepted, the lure of famous fossils
cannot be discounted (05/06/2004).
Owning a feathered Archaeopteryx is a prize so lucrative, one can imagine
the temptation to hire shadowy figures to carve feather impressions around a plain
old theropod fossil. The cost of an expert carving could be covered many times over
by the sale of a prize specimen. Were not claiming this is what happened;
it probably does not matter anyway. Jonathan Wells
argued in Icons of Evolution that cladistic diagrams show that Archaeopteryx
preceded the bird-like dinosaurs thought to be the ancestors of birds,
so its status as a transitional form is questionable (08/05/2004).
Clearly, an animal cannot be older than its ancestor, he joked
(cf. 10/24/2005).
Next headline on:Birds 
Fossils 
Dinosaurs 
Evolution

Many of the biochemical events that occur in a cell are performed by huge complexes
of proteins and nucleic acids. A cunning approach promises to show how the components
convene to make a functioning machine.
The cells macromolecular machines contain dozens or even
hundreds of components. But unlike man-made machines, which are built on
assembly lines, these cellular machines assemble spontaneously from their protein
and nucleic-acid components. It is as though cars could be manufactured by
merely tumbling their parts onto the factory floor. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Clearly there is more to it than that, because the parts all fit together in the right
places, at the right times. Woodson describes how researchers are trying to observe
whether the assembly steps are strictly determined in a predefined sequence, or whether
the parts can arrive via alternative paths, like band members in a scatter formation.
Whatever happens, it needs to be reliable and energy-efficient.
All the parts interact through highly specific interfaces,... she explains.
Actively growing cells demand many thousands of ribosomes, whose synthesisconsumes a large fraction of the cells metabolic energy. So ribosome
assembly must be efficient as well as precise.
Unlike car parts, protein and RNA parts have some flexibility. In a process called
induced fit, they snap together snugly, like rubbery puzzle pieces:

In the soft world of biological materials, cooperativity and specificity
are achieved by the induced fit of molecular interfaces; that is, as two or more
components come into contact they mould around one another to create stronger, more specific
junctions. The idea that ribosome assembly can follow more than one path is
consistent with redundant cooperative linkages in the assembly map. These
cooperative linkages ensure that individual complexes are assembled completely.
They also create alternative kinetic paths that make the assembly process itself more robust.

Woodson spoke of machinery and machines five times, but only mentioned evolution
twice, neither time explaining how the machinery and its precision
assembly process came about. In her introduction, she merely said, Knowing how
cellular complexes organize themselves is crucial for understanding molecular evolution
and for engineering materials that can mimic their properties. The other
mention of evolution was in her last sentence: In the ribosome,
these interactions have been fine-tuned through billions of years of evolution,
providing a clear window into the world of cellular machines.
1Sarah A. Woodson, Biophysics: Assembly line inspection,
Nature
438, 566-567 (1 December 2005) | doi:10.1038/438566a.

And for that classic line, Woodson earns Stupid
Evolution Quote of the Week. Weall just throw a bunch of car parts on
the factory floor for billions of years, and when they get it right by chance, presto:
we can expect a fully operational vehicle. This article, therefore, gets listed
in both the Amazing and Dumb categories. It can be considered
typical of references to evolution in scientific papers: nobody tells us how such things
could have evolved by mindless, directionless chance processes; they just claim they did.
You call this science? Read Gerald Schroeders editorial on
AISH.
He examines the probability of such accidents occurring naturally, showing that the
argument of our online book is still valid. Any scientists
who can believe that chance could perform miracles on this order should be called
People of Frothy Faith.
Next headline on:Cell Biology 
Amazing Stories 
Dumb Ideas

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Past that, through resources like your website...Ive been able to convince my father (professional mathematician and amateur geologist), my best friend (mechanical engineer and fellow USAF Academy Grad/Creation Science nutcase), my pastor (he was the hardest to crack), and many others to realize the Truth of Creation.... Resources like your website help the rest of us at the grassroots level drum up interest in the subject. And regardless of what the major media says: Creationism is spreading like wildfire, so please keep your website going to help fan the flames.
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I plan to translate them all for my friends so as to empower them.
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07/10/2005 commentary)

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Keep up the great work.
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(Salvador Cordova, George Mason University)

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Your website is a sham.
(a co-author of the paper reviewed in the 12/03/2003
entry who did not appreciate the unflattering commentary. This led to a cordial
interchange, but he could not divorce his reasoning from the science vs. faith dichotomy,
and resulted in an impasse over definitions  but, at least, a more mutually respectful dialogue.
He never did explain how his paper supported Darwinian macroevolution. He just claimed
evolution is a fact.)

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(a student in Finland)

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[Later]  I am back to May 2004 in the archives. I figured I should be farther
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Check out this site: www.creationsafaris.com.
This is a fantastic resource for the whole family.... a fantastic reference library with summaries,
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(a reader who found us in Georgia)

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Ive added a link to your excellent Creation-Evolution news site.
(a radio announcer)

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Isnt it easier to admit that your faith has no basis -- hence, faith.
It would be extricate [sic] yourself from intellectual dishonesty -- and
from bearing false witness.
Sincerely, Rev. [name withheld] (an ex-Catholic, apostate Christian Natural/Scientific pantheist)

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(from two prominent creation researchers/writers in Oregon)

Thanks so much for your site! It is brain candy!
(a reader in North Carolina)

I Love your site  probably a little too much. I enjoy the commentary
and the links to the original articles.
(a civil engineer in New York)

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(a retired Air Force Chaplain)

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humor).
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Im visiting this site 3-4 times in a week. Im learning a lot and this site gives me the opportunity to realize that this is a good time to be a creationist!
(a French Canadian reader)

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You may be able to write fast but your logic is fun to work through.
(a pediatrician in California)

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(a reader in western Canada)

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It is truly a blessing!
(a reader in North Carolina)

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it an incredibly useful way to keep up with recent research (I also check science
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plenty of ammunition to come out of the closet (everyone else has).
Most of us are not scientists, but most of the people we talk to are not
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You guys really ARE making a difference!
(a reader in Texas)

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dearly-held precepts. Science (real, open-minded science) is not
interested in theological navel-gazing.
(anonymous)Note: Please supply your name and location when writing in. Anonymous attacks
only make one look foolish and cowardly, and will not normally be printed.
This one was shown to display a bad example.

I appreciate reading your site every day. It is a great way to keep
up on not just the new research being done, but to also keep abreast of the
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(a student at a state university who used CEH when
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the 09/10/2002 headline)

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(a reader, location unknown)

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The information is properly documented, and coming from
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(reader location and occupation unknown)

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We check your Web site weekly (if not daily) to make sure we have
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Please know that your diligence and perseverance to teach the
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(a reader, location and occupation unknown)

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(a reader, location and occupation unknown)

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at least once a week and read what you have. Im a
Christian that is interested in science (Im a mechanical
engineer) and I find you topics interesting and helpful.
I enjoy your lessons and insights on Baloney Detection.
(a year later):
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learn about biology/science, and your pointed commentary.
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Please keep it up. Your website is the best I know of.
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I check it almost every day and often share the contents
(and web address) with lists on which I participate.
I dont know how you do all that you do, but I am grateful
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it with such cool information.
(a home schooler)

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(a reader from Southern California)

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(a missionary in Japan)

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and enjoy your commentary immensely. I consider your web site to be the
most valuable, timely and relevant creation-oriented site on the internet.
(a reader from Ontario, Canada)

Keep up the good work! I thoroughly enjoy your site.
(a reader in Texas)

Thanks for keeping this fantastic web site going. It is very
informative and up-to-date with current news including incisive
insight.
(a reader in North Carolina)

Great site! For all the Baloney Detector is impressive and a
great tool in debunking wishful thinking theories.
(a reader in the Netherlands)

Just wanted to let you know, your work is having quite an impact.
For example, major postings on your site are being circulated among the
Intelligent Design members....
(a PhD organic chemist)

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opening a can of worms ... I love to click all the related links and
read your comments and the links to other websites, but this usually makes me late
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evolutionists infer from the data... Being a medical
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existence of life then Intelligent Design will be the unavoidable
conclusion.
(a medical doctor)

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I told him CreationSafaris.com.
(a PhD geologist)

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information. It was hard at first to believe in Genesis fully, but
now I feel more confident about the mistakes of humankind and that all
their reasoning amounts to nothing in light of a living God.
(a college grad)

Thank you so much for the interesting science links and comments
on your creation evolution headlines page ... it is very
informative.
(a reader from Scottsdale, AZ)

I still
visit your site almost every day, and really enjoy it. Great job!!!
(I also recommend it to many, many students.)
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much. I really appreciate a decent, calm and scholarly approach to the
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endeavorits superb!

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the matter.
(a reader in the Air Force).

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through these complex issues. I especially love the
Baloney Detector.
(a scientist).

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I really like your side-bar of truisms.
Yogi [Berra] is absolutely correct. If I were a man of wealth, I would
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(a registered nurse in Alabama, who found
us on TruthCast.com.)

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The father of stellar astronomy and the pride of the English in the late
18th to early 19th centuries was neither English nor a scientist originally,
but a German-born immigrant musician, and a Jewish Christian.
Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel (called
William Herschel in his adopted country) was a pioneer of the heavens, taking
Galileos early attempts at sky surveying to grand lengths.
Patrick Moore considers Herschel the greatest observer who ever lived.
Though just an amateur at first, he built the largest telescopes of his era,
and in the process of spending countless hours on cold nights perched on a
ladder at the eyepiece of his instruments, he discovered binary stars, nebulae,
comets, and the planet Uranus  the first man to discover a planet
since antiquity. He proved that the laws that govern our earth and moon
are the same throughout the heavens. He brought into focus the understanding
that the earth and sun are but specks among thousands of similar suns.
He launched modern astronomys project to understand the nature of the
nebulae, the distribution of stars in the galaxy and our place in it.
He discovered invisible infrared light. In addition to his
scientific observations, William Herschel became a leading natural philosopher
and a friend of kings and intellectuals, yet he was described as a man of
devout, yet simple Christian faith.

To the Herschel legend we must quickly add his sister Caroline and his son
John William, who both rose to his level of greatness. Williams
father was a bandmaster in the Hanoverian guard. Each of his children
became talented musicians; William gained proficiency on the oboe.
Troubles with the Seven Years War in Germany made him leave for England, where he landed with scarcely
one coin in his pocket. His musical skills kept him gainfully employed
as a church organist and oboist. Seven years after arriving, he began
to take up seriously a hobby he had always enjoyed, astronomy. The
telescopes of his day were not powerful enough for him. He learned how
to grind mirrors, and spent all his spare time (when not playing music)
perfecting the art. Patrick Moore says that one of his first attempts
at making a 5" objective succeeded after two hundred failures.

By 1774, his brother and sister also arrived in England. Caroline stayed
with William and became his assistant. Williams observing career
was launched in earnest with a look at the Orion Nebula, and he continued for
37 years, making bigger and better telescopes along the way until his home
(Observatory House in Slough) boasted a 48" mirror weighing
over a ton inside a 40-foot tube slung within a giant wooden scaffold. Caroline,
short and unmarried, was her brothers biggest helper. Even after
William married at age 50, she remained near at hand, keeping his records and
doing some significant observing herself. She discovered six comets (a
big interest in those days), and was eventually honored by royalty, famous in her
own right to the age of 98. Caroline, however, thought
little of her own fame. Like a humble moon, she was content to bask in the
reflected glory of her famous brother.

Uranus was discovered accidentally while William scanned the skies.
The fame of being the first human to discover a new planet around the sun
resulted in King George III granting him a permanent salary as royal astronomer,
enough to let him abandon his musical career and do astronomical work full time.
He wanted to name the new planet in the kings honor, but other astronomers
voted to stick to the naming convention of mythological gods, so the name Uranus was chosen.
Uranus is a strange planet, hard to explain by naturalistic theories, because of its
energy, composition, and inclination; tipped at 98 degrees, it circles the sun with
its retinue of moons like a bulls eye. Stranger still, discoveries by
the Voyager spacecraft in 1986 showed its magnetic field to be highly tilted and
off-center. No one has been able to explain why. One of its moons, Miranda,
has some of the strangest terrain ever seen, including a cliff so high that in the weak
gravity of that world, someone stumbling over the edge would be in free-fall for
eight minutes. Speaking of moons,
Herschel also discovered two more moons of Saturn (Mimas and Enceladus).
How awe-struck and fascinated would be his expression today to see what
spacecraft have revealed close-up on
these objects that, to him, were mere faint points of light twinkling in the eyepiece
of his telescopes, as he gazed in the cold, still night air.

One of Herschels main goals was to sample the sky systematically and map the distribution
of stars, to gain a picture of where the sun stood in relation to the Milky Way.
Due to assumptions later shown to be flawed, his map put the earth at the center of
a somewhat flattened, oblong shape. It was an important start, nonetheless.
Herschel was a diligent observer, ever willing
to sacrifice his hypotheses on the altar of new evidence. At first he thought binary
stars were chance alignments, but later observations proved they were in orbit around
each other. He thought the nebulae were composed of stars made faint by distance,
but later realized some were composed of dust or gas. Herschel gave us the
unfortunate term planetary nebulae because these objects at first appeared
to him as disks like planets; they have nothing to do with planets and exist far beyond
our solar system. The Hubble Space Telescope has revealed many of these as brilliant,
colorful stellar explosions with intricate hourglass and spiral structures. Some
show evidence of repeated incidents of mass loss. In all, Herschel catalogued
over 90,000 stars, far more than any of his predecessors, and he increased the number of
known nebulae from 103 to 2500. Most
mysterious were the non-planetary nebulae. Herschel considered Immanuel Kants idea that
these might be distant and distinct stellar associations  galaxies like our own
Milky Way, but the proof would have to wait for 202 years after Herschels death.
Another contribution was calibrating of the old stellar magnitude scale of Hipparchus; he realized
that a difference of five magnitudes corresponded to a change in brightness of 100.
Herschel submitted 90 volumes to the Royal Society during his productive life.
Patrick Moore says, More than any other man, he put stellar astronomy on a really
firm footing. ... He was knighted in 1816, he received every honor that the scientific
world could bestow, and he became the first President of the newly-formed Astronomical
Society of London (now the Royal Astronomical Society). He presented his last
scientific paper when he was eighty years old, and he was active almost to the date of his
death on August 25, 1822. He is buried under the tower of the old Anglican
church in Slough, England.

Though sources Ive checked agree William Herschel was sincerely religious,
none are detailed enough to indicate if he was really a born-again Christian.
His family attended church regularly, but musician that he was, William could have been
more performer than believer. Was he just a Sunday Christian, and secular astronomer
the rest of the week?
N. S. Dodge wrote in 1871 of the familys sincere Christian faith, but Dan Graves
(Scientists of Faith, p. 115) called him a nominal Christian, at best. Herschel had
some strange ideas: he believed the other planets, the moon, and even the sun were
inhabited (but so did many others in his day). Some of his writings seem to assume long
ages and the insignificance of man in a universe populated not only by myriads of stars
but perhaps other civilizations. He speaks of the Author and Creator of the heavens,
but not of the Scriptures or Jesus Christ. Herschel dined with Hume and LaPlace, the
skeptics, but as a dignitary in frequent touch with the intellectuals
of the day and polite society, this cannot be taken to assume agreement
with them. In some of his diary entries, it appears they conversed about music
or the fine cuisine rather than philosophy or theology.
In The Scientific Papers of
Sir William Herschel published by the Royal Society in 1912, he relates an incident
where the First Consul and La Place were having an argument over naturalistic philosophy.
Herschel writes in his diary,

The difference
was occasioned by an exclamation of the First Consuls, who asked in a tone of
exclamation or admiration (when we were speaking of the extent of the sidereal heavens)
and who is the author of all this. M. de La Place wished to shew that
a chain of natural causes would account for the construction and preservation of the
wonderful system; this the First Consul rather opposed. Much may be said on the
subject; by joining the arguments of both we shall be led to Nature and
Natures God.

Compromise? Theistic evolution? Wishy-washy belief in God, or signs of
a true believer? Hard to
say, because he changes the subject in his diary after leaving us hanging with much
may be said. At another point, the Royal Society editor leaves a tantalizing
footnote about missing letters by Herschel:

These letters, which extend to some 400 pages, are still extant but have not been at our
disposal. We are informed that Herschel in them interweaves his philosophy and
even his musical studies with references of an earnest kind to the Creator as a
beneficent Deity, expressing his gratitude and addressing him in a prayerful spirit.

Again, this could be said of a unitarian or deist, but hints at something more.
In a philosophical essay on Liberty and Necessity, he comes out opposing the necessitarians
(those that believe natural law necessarily leads to the order we observe).
This would be consistent with one who believes God intervenes in human affairs.

Several Christian biographical essays have echoed Henry Morris
attribution to Herschel of the line, An undevout astronomer must be mad
(Men of Science, Men of God, p. 30).
Unfortunately, I have not been able to corroborate this quotation.
The slightly different line An undevout astronomer is mad is part of a poem entitled Night
thoughts by Edward Young, whose life was earlier but overlapped with Herschels.
Perhaps the poem was inspired by the life of Herschel,
or a statement by him. It would not be unrealistic to assume that the statement
reflected Herschels own feelings about his work. It seems clear that Herschel
was devout, prayerful, humble, gracious, kind, and moral  good, but not enough to
indicate a true believer in the gospel of Jesus Christ. The sources I have checked
do not provide enough evidence to call William Herschel more than a nominal Christian.
Scientists in this period of the so-called Enlightenment were enamoured with
natural laws. They were taking Newtons
emphasis on laws to new extremes, and knowingly or not, tended to distance God from immanent action in the
affairs of the world. Where Herschel fits in this trend is not clear.
But even if he falls short of
an example of a thoroughly Biblical Christian, he clearly does exemplify one
who believed in a divine Creator and Author of the laws of nature, to whom we owe our
worship and admiration. As such, he was at least continuing in the tradition of
empirical science motivated by the Christian world view.

Observatory House was pulled down in 1960, but the tube of his 40-foot telescope was kept
at the Greenwich Observatory as a monument to the years of painstaking observation of the
skies by a man starstruck by the wondrous majesty and order of Creation. In the
summer of 1986, the Voyager 2 spacecraft made a historic flyby of the planet Uranus.
The St. Laurence Anglican Church in Slough, England, where Herschel is buried, was recently
restored after years of damage and neglect, and in February 2001, was adorned with a new
stained-glass Herschel Window commemorating his astronomical discoveries. Another nearby
window quotes Psalm 8, When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the
moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained, what is man, that Thou art mindful of him?

Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle
babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge  by
professing it some have strayed concerning the faith.

I Timothy 6:20-21

Song of the True Scientist

O Lord, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made
them all. The earth is full of Your possessions . . . . May the glory of the Lord endure forever. May the
Lord rejoice in His works . . . . I will sing to the Lord s long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have my
being. May my meditation be sweet to Him; I will be glad in the Lord. May sinners be
consumed from the earth, and the wicked be no more. Bless the Lord, O my soul! Praise the Lord!

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